Isaac waved his hands at Yagharek, warming to his task of denunciation and explanation.

“You know, Yag, when they realized something was up down south in the scrubland-and it didn’t take them long to clock it was a massive Torque-rift-there was a lot of crap talked about what to call it, and the arguments still haven’t died, half a fucking millennium on. Someone named it the Cacotopic Stain, and the moniker stuck. I remember being told in college that it was a terrible populist description, because Cacotopos-Bad Place, basically-was moralizing, that the Torque was neither good nor bad, so on. Thing is…obviously, that’s right at one level, right? Torque’s not evil…it’s mindless, it’s motiveless. That’s what I reckon anyway-others disagree.

“But even if that’s true, seems to me that western Ragamoll is precisely a Cacotopos. That’s a vast stretch of land which is totally beyond our power. There’s no thaumaturgy we can learn, no techniques to perfect, which’ll let us do anything with that place. We’ve just got to stay the fuck out and hope it eventually ebbs away. It’s a huge fucking badland crawling with Inchmen-which admittedly live outside Torque-zones, as well, but seem particularly happy there-and other things I wouldn’t even bother trying to describe. So you’ve got a force that makes a total mockery of our sentience. That’s ‘bad’ as far as I’m concerned. It could be the fucking definition of the word. See, Yag…it pains me to say this, it really does, I mean I’m a fucking rationalist…but the Torque is unknowable!”

With a huge gush of relief, Isaac saw that Yagharek was nodding. Isaac nodded too, fervently.

“Partly selfish, all this, you understand,” Isaac said, with sudden grim humour. “I mean, I don’t want to be arsing around with experiments and end up turning into some…I don’t know, some revolting thing. Just too bloody risky. We’ll stick to crisis, all right? On which topic, I’ve got some stuff to show you.”

Isaac gently took Sacramundi’s report from Yagharek’s hands and returned it to the shelves. He opened a desk drawer and brought out his tentative blueprint.

He placed it in front of Yagharek, then hesitated and drew away slightly.

“Yag, old son,” he said. “I really have to know…is that behind us, now? Are you…satisfied? Convinced? If you’re going to fuck about with Torque, for Jabber’s sake tell me now and I’ll bid you goodbye…and my condolences.”

He studied Yagharek’s face with troubled eyes.

“I have heard what you say, Grimnebulin,” said the garuda, after a pause. “I…respect you.” Isaac smiled humourlessly. “I accept what you say.”

Isaac began to grin, and would have responded, except that Yagharek was looking out of the window with a melancholy stillness. His mouth was open for a long time before he spoke.

“We know of the Torque, we garuda.” He paused lengthily between sentences. “It has visited the Cymek. We call it rebekh-lajhnar-h’k” The word was spat out with a harsh cadence like angry birdsong. Yagharek looked Isaac in the eye. “Rebekh-sackmai is Death: ‘the force that ends.’ Rebekh-kavt is Birth: ‘the force that begins.’ They were the First Twins, born to the worldwomb after union with her own dream. But there was a…a sickness…a tumour-” he paused to savour the correct word as it occurred to him “-in the earthbelly with them. Rebekh-lajhnar-h’k tore its way out of the worldwomb just behind them, or perhaps at the same time, or perhaps just before. It is the…” He thought hard for a translation. “The cancer-sibling. Its name means: ‘the force that cannot be trusted.’ ”

Yagharek did not tell the folk story in any incantatory, shamanic tones, but in the deadpan of a xenthropologist. He opened his beak wide, closed it abruptly, then opened it again.

“I am an outcast, a renegade,” Yagharek continued. “It is…no surprise…if I turn my back on my traditions, perhaps…But I must learn when to turn to face them again. Lajhni is ‘to trust,’ and ‘to bind firm.’ The Torque cannot be trusted, and nor can it be bound. It is uncontainable. I have known that since I first knew the stories. But in my…I…I am eager, Grimnebulin. Perhaps I turn too quickly to things from which I would once have recoiled. It is…hard…being between worlds…being of no world. But you have made me remember what I have always known. As if you were an elder of my band.” There was one last, long pause. “Thank you.”

Isaac nodded slowly.

“Not at all…I’m…mighty relieved to hear all that, Yag. More than I can say. Let’s…say no more about it.” He cleared his throat and prodded the diagram. “I’ve some fascinating stuff to show you, old son.”

In the dusty light under Isaac’s walkway, the repairman from Orriaben’s constructs teased the innards of the broken cleaning machine with screwdriver and solder. He kept up a mindless jaunty whistling, a trick that took no thought at all.

The sound of the consultation above reached him as the faintest bass murmur, interspersed with an occasional cracked utterance. He looked up in surprise, briefly, at this latter voice, but quickly returned to the matter in hand.

A brief examination of the mechanisms of the construct’s internal analytical engine confirmed the basic diagnosis. Apart from the usual age-related problems of cracked joints, rust and worn bristles-all of which the repairman quickly patched up-the construct had contracted some kind of virus. A programme card incorrectly punched or a slipped gear deep within the steam-driven intelligence engine had led to a set of instructions feeding back into themselves in an infinite loop. Activities the construct should have been able to carry out as a reflex, it had started to pore over, to attempt to extract more information or more complete orders. Seized by paradoxical instructions or a surfeit of data, the cleaning construct was paralysed.

The engineer glanced up at the wooden floor above him. He was ignored.

He felt his heart judder with excitement. Viruses came in a variety of forms. Some simply closed down the workings of the machine. Others led the mechanisms to perform bizarre and pointless tasks, the result of a newly programmed outlook on everyday information. And others, of which this was a perfect, a beautiful specimen, paralysed constructs by making them recursively examine their basic behavioural programmes.

They were bedeviled by reflection. The seeds of self-consciousness.

The repairman reached into his case and brought out a set of programme cards, fanned them expertly. He whispered a prayer.

His fingers working at astonishing speed, the man loosened various valves and dials in the construct’s core. He levered open the protective covering on the programme input slot. He checked that there was enough pressure in the generator to power the receiving mechanism of the metal brain. The programmes would load into the memory, to be actualized throughout the construct’s processors when it was switched on. Quickly, he slid first one card, then another and another into the opening. He felt the ratcheting spring-loaded teeth rotate their way along the stiff board, slotting into the little holes that translated into instructions or information. He paused between each card to make sure that the data loaded correctly.

He shuffled his little deck like a cardsharp. He sensed the minuscule jerks of the analytical engine through the fingertips of his left hand. He felt for faulty input, for broken teeth or stiff, unoiled moving parts that would corrupt or block his programmes. There were none. The man could not forebear from hissing triumphantly. The construct’s virus was entirely the result of information-feedback, and not any kind of hardware failure. That meant that the cards with which the man was plying the engine would all be read, their instructions and information loaded into the sophisticated steam-engine brain.