“One of the godsdamned things is right there and it’s laying its eggs so we have to damn well take it right now…” he hissed. Shadrach smacked his hand over Isaac’s mouth. He held Isaac’s eyes until the older man had calmed a little. Shadrach turned his back as Isaac had done, then stood slowly and gazed for himself onto the grisly scene. Isaac sat with his back to the bricks, waiting.

Shadrach dropped down again to Isaac’s level. His face was set.

“Hmmm,” he murmured. “I see. Right. Did you say the moth-thing can’t sense constructs?” Isaac nodded.

“As far as we know,” he said.

“Right then. You’ve done a damn fine job programming these constructs. And they’re an extraordinary design. Do you really mean it, that they’ll know when to attack, if we give them instructions? They can understand variables that complicated?”

Isaac nodded again.

“Then we have a plan,” said Shadrach. “Listen to me.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Slowly, trembling almost uncontrollably, the memory of Barbile’s quasi-death vivid in him, Isaac climbed out of the hole.

He kept his eyes rigidly on the mirrors before him. He was dimly aware of the discoloured wall behind them. The vile shape of the slake-moth shook in the mirrors as his head moved.

As Isaac emerged, the slake-moth stopped moving suddenly. Isaac stiffened. It turned its head upwards and flickered its enormous tongue through the air. The vestigial antennae in its ocular sockets waved uneasily from side to side. Isaac moved again, creeping towards the wall.

The slake-moth moved its head uneasily. There was obviously some leakage, Isaac thought, from the edge of his helmet, some trickles of thought that wafted tantalizingly through the aether. But nothing clear enough for the slake-moth to find him.

When Isaac had made his way to the wall, Shadrach followed him up and into the room. Again, his presence discomfited the slake-moth a little, but nothing more than that.

After Shadrach, three monkey-constructs pulled themselves into view, leaving one to guard the tunnel. They began to walk slowly towards the slake-moth. It turned towards them, seemed to watch them without eyes.

“I think it can sense their physical shape and their movement, and ours as well,” whispered Isaac. “But without any mental trail, it doesn’t see any…either of us as sapient life. We’re just moving physical stuff, like trees in the wind.”

The slake-moth was turning to face the oncoming constructs. They separated and began to approach the moth from different directions. They did not move fast, and the slake-moth did not seem concerned. But it was a little wary.

“Now,” whispered Shadrach. He and Isaac reached out and began slowly to haul in the metal piping that extended from the top of their helmets.

As the open ends of the pipes drew closer, the slake-moth grew agitated. It skittered back and forth, returning to protect its eggs, then stalking forward a few feet, its teeth chattering in a terrible rictus.

Isaac and Shadrach looked at each other and counted silently together.

On three, they pulled the ends of their pipes out into the open room. In a single movement, as swiftly as they could, they whipped the metal around and sent the open ends into the corner, fifteen feet from them.

The slake-moth went berserk. It hissed and screeched in a loathsome register. It hunched up its body, increasing its size, and a host of exoskeletal jags flicked out of hollows in its flesh in organic threat.

Isaac and Shadrach stared into their mirrors, awed by its monstrous majesty. It had spread its wings and turned to face the corner where the pipe ends coiled. Its wing-patterns pulsed with misdirected, hypnotic energy.

Isaac was frozen. The slake-moth’s wings eddied with uncanny patterns. It stalked towards the pipe-ends in a low, predatory crouch, now on four legs, now six, now two.

Quickly, Shadrach pulled Isaac towards the dreamshit ball.

They walked forward, passing the incensed, hungry slake-moth, almost close enough to touch. They saw it approaching in their mirrors, a massive looming animal weapon. As they passed it, both men turned smoothly on their heels, walking backwards towards the dreamshit at one moment, then forwards the next. That way, they kept the slake-moth behind them, visible in the mirrors.

The moth walked straight past the constructs, knocking one aside without even noticing, as a serrated spine swung sideways in quivering, ravenous rage.

Isaac and Shadrach walked carefully, checking in their mirrors that the ends of their mental exhaust-pipes remained where they had been thrown, acting as slake-moth bait. Two of the monkey-constructs followed the slake-moth at a small distance, the third approaching the eggs.

“Quickly,” hissed Shadrach, and pushed Isaac to the floor. Isaac fumbled with the knife at his belt, wasting seconds with the clip. Then he had it out. He hesitated a moment, and then pushed it smoothly into the big, sticky mass.

Shadrach watched intently in his mirrors. The slake-moth, shadowed by the hovering constructs, pounced absurdly on the snaking ends of the pipes.

As Isaac drew his knife down the surface of the egg-case, the moth flailed with fingers and tongue to find the enemy whose mind remained tauntingly conscious.

Isaac wound the ends of his shirt around his hands and began to tug at the split he had made in the mass of dreamshit. With a big effort, he pulled the yielding ball apart.

“Quickly,” said Shadrach again.

The dreamshit-raw, uncut, distilled and pure-seeped through the cloth around Isaac’s hands and made his fingers tingle. He gave one last tug. The centre of the dreamshit ball was laid open, and there in the centre was a little clutch of eggs.

Each was translucent and oval, smaller than a hen’s. Through its semi-liquid skin, Isaac could see some faint, coiling shape. He looked up and beckoned the monkey-construct that stood nearby.

At the far end of the room, the slake-moth had picked up one of the metal tubes, putting its face in the flow of emotion from its open end. It shook it in confusion. It opened its mouth and unrolled its obscene, intrusive tongue. It licked the end of the pipe once, then plunged its tongue into it, eagerly seeking the source of this tempting flow.

“Now!” said Shadrach. The slake-moth’s hands moved along the coiled metal, seeking purchase. Shadrach’s face went suddenly white. He spread his legs and braced himself. “Now, dammit, do it now!” he shouted. Isaac looked up in alarm.

Shadrach was staring intently into his mirrors. With his left hand, he was aiming behind him, pointing his thaumaturgic pistol at the slake-moth.

Time slowed down as Isaac looked into his own mirrors and saw the dull metal pipe in the hands of the moth. He saw Shadrach’s hand, steady as the dead, clutching his flintlock, pointing it behind his own back. He saw the monkey-constructs waiting for their order to attack.

He looked down again at the vile clutch of eggs, seeping and glutinous below him.

He opened his mouth to shout to the constructs, and as he inhaled to yell, the slake-moth leaned forward a moment then pulled at the piping with all its horrendous strength.

Isaac’s voice was drowned by Shadrach’s wail and the explosion from his flintlock. He had waited a moment too long before firing. The enhanced ball smacked with a boom into the substance of the wall. Shadrach was pulled through the air. The leather strap attaching his helmet to his head snapped. The helmet flew away from him and arced at speed on the end of the pipe, tugging the connections from Isaac’s engine, shattering against the wall. Shadrach’s perfect curving trajectory collapsed as he was untethered. He tumbled in an ugly broken arc, his gun flying away from him, until he landed heavy and unwieldy on the concrete floor. His head smacked against the rough concrete floor, sending blood spattering out across the dust.