Lin continues her idiot monologue, and Isaac tries to answer with his own hands, caressing her and signing slowly as if she were a child. But she is not: she is half an adult, and his manner enrages her. She tries to stalk away and falls, her limbs disobedient. She is terrified of her own body. Isaac helps her, sits her up and feeds her, massages her tense, bruised shoulders.

Derkhan returns to our muttered relief with slabs of paste and a large handful of variegated berries. Their tones are lush and vivid.

I thought the damn Council had us, she says. I thought some construct was after me. I had to wind through Kinken to get away.

None of us know if she was really being tracked.

Lin is excited. Her antennae and her headlegs quiver. She tries to chew a finger of the white paste, but she trembles and spills it and cannot control herself. Isaac is gentle with her. He pushes the paste slowly into her mouth, unobtrusive, as if she ate for herself.

It takes some minutes for the headscarab to digest the paste and direct it towards the khepri’s gland. As we wait, Isaac shakes a few colourberries at Lin, waiting until her twitches decide him that she wants a particular bunch, which he feeds to her gently and carefully.

We are silent. Lin swallows and chews carefully. We watch her.

Minutes pass and then her gland distends. We rock forward, eager to see what she will make.

She opens her gland-lips and pushes out a pellet of moist khepri-spit. She moves her arms in excitement as it oozes shapeless and sopping from her, dropping heavy to the floor like a white turd.

A thin drool of coloured spittle from the berries streams out after it, spattering and staining the mess.

Derkhan looks away. Isaac cries as I have never seen a human do.

Outside our foul shanty the city squats fatly in its freedom, brazen again and fearless. It ignores us. It is an ingrate. The days are cooler this week, a brief ebbing of the relentless summer. Gusts blow in from the coast, from the Gross Tar estuary and Iron Bay. Clutches of ships arrive every day. They queue in the river to the east, waiting to load and unload. Merchant ships from Kohnid and Tesh; explorers from the Firewater Straits; floating factories from Myrshock; privateers from Figh Vadiso, respectable and law-abiding so far from the open sea. Clouds scurry like bees before the sun. The city is raucous. It has forgotten. It has some vague notion that once its sleep was troubled: nothing more.

I can see the sky. There are slats of light between the rough boards that surround us. I would like very much to be away from this now. I can imagine the sensation of wind, the sudden heaviness of air below me. I would like to look down on this building and this street. I wish that there was nothing to hold me here, that gravity was a suggestion I could ignore.

Lin signs. Sticky fearful, whispers Isaac snottily, watching her hands. Piss and mother, food wings happy. Afraid. Afraid.

Part Eight. Judgement

Chapter Fifty-Two

“We have to leave.”

Derkhan spoke quickly. Isaac looked up at her dully. He was feeding Lin, who squirmed uncomfortably, unsure of what she wanted to do. She signed at him, her hands tracing words and then simply moving, tracing shapes that had no meaning. He flicked fruit detritus from her shirt.

He nodded and looked down. Derkhan continued as if he had disagreed with her, as if she were convincing him.

“Every time we move, we’re afraid.” She spoke quickly. Her face was hard. Terror, guilt, exhilaration and misery had scoured her. She was exhausted. “Every time any kind of automaton goes past, we think the Construct Council’s found us. Every man or woman or xenian makes us freeze up. Is it the militia? Is it one of Motley’s thugs?” She kneeled down. “I can’t live like this, ‘Zaac,” she said. She looked down at Lin, smiled very slowly and closed her eyes. “We’ll take her away,” she whispered. “We can look after her. We’re finished here. It can’t be long before one of them finds us. I’m not waiting around for that.”

Isaac nodded again.

“I…” He thought carefully. He tried to organize his mind. “I’ve got…a commitment,” he said quietly.

He rubbed the flab below his chin. It itched as his stubble re-grew, pushing through his uneven skin. Wind blew through the windows. The house in Pincod was tall and mouldering and full of junkies. Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek had claimed the top two floors. There was one window on each side, overlooking the street and the wretched little yard. Weeds had burst out through the stained concrete below like subcutaneous growths.

Isaac and the others barricaded the doors whenever they were in: slipped out carefully, disguised, mostly at night. Sometimes they would venture out in the daylight, as Yagharek had now. There was always some reason given, some urgency that meant the vague trip could not wait. It was just claustrophobia. They had freed the city: it was untenable that they should not walk under the sun.

“I know about the commitment,” Derkhan said. She looked over at the loosely connected components of the crisis engine. Isaac had cleaned them up the previous night, slotted them into place.

“Yagharek,” he said. “I owe him. I promised.”

Derkhan looked down and swallowed, then turned her head to him again. She nodded.

“How long?” she said. Isaac glanced up at her, broke her gaze and looked away. He shrugged briefly.

“Some of the wires are burnt out,” he said vaguely, and shifted Lin into a more comfortable position on his chest. “There was a shitload of feedback, melted right through some of the circuits. Um…I’m going to have to go out tonight and rummage around for a couple of adapters…and a dynamo. I can fix the rest of it myself,” he said, “but I’ll have to get the tools. Trouble is, every time we nick something we put ourselves even more at risk.” He shrugged slowly. There was nothing he could do. They had no money. “Then I have to get a cell-battery or something. But the hardest thing is going to be the maths. Fixing all this up is mostly just…mechanics. But even if I can get the engines to work, getting the sums right to…you know, formulating this in equations…that’s damn hard. That’s what I got the Council to do last time.” He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall.

“I have to formulate the commands,” he said quietly. “Fly. That’s what I’ve got to tell it. Put Yag in the sky and he’s in crisis, he’s about to fall. Tap that and channel it, keep him in the air, keep him flying, keep him in crisis, so tap the energy and so on. It’s a perfect loop,” he said. “I think it’ll work. It’s just the maths…”

“How long?” Derkhan repeated quietly. Isaac frowned.

“A week…or two, maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe more.”

Derkhan shook her head. She said nothing.

“I owe him, Dee!” Isaac said, his voice tense. “I’ve promised him this for ages, and he…”

He got the slake-moth off Lin, he had been about to say, but something in him had preempted him, asked if that was such a good thing after all, and appalled, Isaac faltered into silence.

It’s the most powerful science for hundreds of years, he thought in a sudden rage, and I can’t come out of hiding. I have to…to spirit it away.

He stroked Lin’s carapace and she began to sign to him, mentioning fish and cold and sugar.

“I know, ‘Zaac,” said Derkhan without anger. “I know. He’s…he deserves it. But we can’t wait that long. We have to go.”

I’ll do what I can, promised Isaac, I have to help him, I’ll be quick.