The dextrier thought with a hard, fierce intelligence.

It had been vital that the Rescue-handlinger won the debate with the sinistrals. If they had refused to go along with Rudgutter’s plans, the dextrier would not have been able to go against them: only sinistrals could decide. But to antagonize the government would have spelt the end for the handlingers in the city. They had power, but they existed on sufferance in New Crobuzon. They were simply outnumbered by such a massive factor. The government suffered them only so long as they performed services. Rescue-dextrier was sure that any insubordination, and the government would announce that it had discovered the murderous, parasitic handlingers were loose in the city. Rudgutter might even let slip the whereabouts of the host-farm. The handlinger community would be destroyed.

So there was a certain joy in Rescue-dextrier as it flew.

Even so, it did not relish this weird experience. To bear a sinistral through the air was not unprecedented, although this kind of joint hunting had never been attempted before; but to fly without sight was utterly terrifying.

The dog-sinistral cast its mind out like fingers, like antennae that crept out in all directions for hundreds of yards. It scanned for weird soundings in the psychosphere, and whispered gently at the dextrier, telling it where to fly. The dog stared in the mirrors of its helmet and directed its carrier’s flight.

It kept links extended with all of the other hunting pairs.

anything feeling anything? it questioned. Cautiously, the other sinistrals told it that no, there was nothing. They continued searching.

Rescue-handlinger felt the warm wind buffet its host’s body in childish slaps. Rescue’s hair whipped from side to side.

The dog-handlinger wriggled, tried to shift its host-body into a more comfortable position. It was borne over a twisting tide of chimneys, the nightscape of Ludmead. The Rescue-handlinger was sweeping up towards Mafaton and Chnum. The sinistral flicked its canine eyes momentarily away from its mirror-helm. Receding behind it, the leviathan ivory bloom of the Ribs defined the skyline, dwarfing the raised railways. The white stone of the university swept below them.

At the outer fringe of the sinistral’s mental reach, it felt a peculiar prickling in the city’s communal aura. Its attention flickered back up, and it was staring into the mirrors.

slow slow ahead and up, it told the Rescue-handlinger. something here stay with me, it breathed across the city to the other hunting sinistrals. It felt them hover and give the order to slow, felt the other pairs draw to a halt and wait for his report.

The dextrier eased up through the air towards the twitching patch of psychaether. Rescue-handlinger could feel the sinistral’s unease communicated through its link, and it clamped down hard not to be contaminated by it. weapon! it thought, that’s me. no thinking!

The dextrier slid through layers of air, creeping up into a thinner atmosphere. It opened its host’s mouth and rolled its tongue, nervous and ready to spitsear. It unfolded its host’s arms, held the pistol up and ready.

The sinistral probed the disturbed area. There was an alien hunger, a lingering gluttony. It was slick with the juices of a thousand other minds, saturating and staining the patch of psycho-sphere like cooking grease. A vague trail of exuded souls and that exotic appetite dribbled out through the sky.

to me to me sibling handlingers it is here I have found it, whispered the sinistral across the city. A shiver of shared trepidation rippled out from the sinistrals, the five epicentres, crossed and made peculiar patterns in the psychosphere. In Tar Wedge and Badside and Barrackham and Ketch Heath, there were rushes of air as the suspended figures flew across the city towards Ludmead as if pulled on strings.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Do not be alarmed by my avatar,” hissed the brainless man to Isaac and the others, his eyes still wide and unclear. “I cannot synthesize a voice, so I have reclaimed this discarded body that bobbed along the river that I may intercede with bloodlife. That-” the man pointed behind him at the enormous, looming figure of the construct that merged with the rubbish heaps “-is me. This-” he stroked his quivering carcass “-is my hand and tongue. Without the old cerebellum to confuse the body with its contrary impulses, I can install my input.” In a macabre motion, the man reached up and fingered the cable where it sank behind his eyes, into the clotting flesh at the top of his spine.

Isaac felt the huge weight of the construct behind him. He shifted uneasily. The naked zombie-man had stopped about ten feet from Isaac’s party. It waved its palsied hand.

“You are welcome,” it continued, in a trembling voice. “I know of your work from the reports of your cleaner. It is one of me. I wish to speak with you of the slake-moths.” The ruined man was staring at Isaac.

Isaac looked at Derkhan and Lemuel. Yagharek drew a little closer to them. Isaac looked up and saw that the humans in the corner of the tip were ceaselessly praying to the vast, automated skeleton. As he watched, Isaac saw the construct repairman who had visited his warehouse. The man’s face was a study of fervent devotion. The constructs around them were still and unmoving, all but the five guards behind them, the burliest of the construction models.

Lemuel licked his lips.

“Talk to the man, Isaac,” he hissed. “Don’t be rude…”

Isaac opened and closed his mouth.

“Uh…” he began. His voice was cold. “Construct Council…We’re…honoured…but we don’t know…”

“You know nothing,” said the shaking, bloody figure. “I understand. Be patient and you will understand.” The man backed slowly away from them over the uneven ground. He retreated in the moonlight towards his dark automated master. “I am the Construct Council,” he said, his voice quivering and emotionless. “I was born of random power and virus and chance. My first body lay here in the dump and ran its motor down, discarded because a programme had faltered. As my body lay decomposing the virus circulated in my engines and spontaneously, I found thought.

“I rusted quietly for a year as I organized my new intellect. What started as a burst of self-knowledge became ratiocination and opinion. I self-constructed. I ignored the dustmen all around me in the day as they piled the city debris up in bulwarks around me. When I was prepared I showed myself to the quietest of the men. I printed him a message, told him to bring a construct to me.

“Fearful, he obeyed and connected it to my output as I instructed, by a long and twisting cable. It became my first limb. Slowly it dredged the dump for pieces suitable for a body. I began to self-build, welding and hammering and soldering by night.

“The dustman was in awe. He whispered of me in taverns at night, of a legend, of the viral machine. Rumours and myths were born. One night in the midst of his grandiose lies he found another who had a self-organized construct. A shopping construct whose mechanisms had slipped, whose gears had faltered and who had been reborn with Constructed Intelligence, a thinking thing. A secret that the erstwhile owner could hardly believe.

“My dustman bade his friend bring the construct to me. That night those years ago I met it, another like me. I bade my worshipper open up the analytical engine of that other, my mate, and we connected.

“It was a revelation. Our viral minds connected and our steam-pistoned brains did not double in capacity, but flowered. An exponential blooming. We two became I.

“My new part, the shopping construct, left at dawn. It returned two days later, with new experiences. It had become separate. We had now two days of unconnected history. There was another communion, and we were I again.