“Umma Balsum.” The woman inclined her head. “Got some business for me?”

Derkhan made her way across the room and hovered nervously by a bursting sofa until Umma Balsum indicated that she should sit. Derkhan did so abruptly, and fumbled in her bag.

“I need…uh…to talk to Benjamin Flex.” Her voice was taut. She spoke in little bursts, gearing up to each announcement, then spitting it out. She pulled out a little pouch of the detritus she had found at the site of the abattoir.

She had gone to Dog Fenn the previous evening, as news of the militia’s crushing of the dock strike washed over New Crobuzon. It swept along with rumours in its wake. One of the rumours concerned a subsidiary attack on a seditious newspaper in Dog Fenn.

It had been late when Derkhan had arrived, disguised as always, in the dank streets in the south-east of the city. It had rained; warm, fat drops bursting like rotting things on the rubble in the cul-de-sac. The entrance was blocked, so Derkhan had entered through the low portal through which meat and animals were slung. She had clung to the noisome stones, dangling over the lip into the butchers’ den, stained with shit and gore from a thousand terrified animals, and dropped the few feet into the bloody darkness of the deserted charnel-house.

She had crawled over the ruined conveyor-belt, snagged herself on the meathooks that littered the floor. The sanguinary slick in which she stumbled was cold and sticky.

Derkhan had fought her way past the stones that had burst from walls, over the ruined stairs, up towards Ben’s room, the centre of the destruction. Her way was paved with ripped and ruined shards of printing machinery, and smoke-charred pieces of cloth and paper.

The room itself was little more than a hole full of rubbish. Chunks of masonry had crushed the bed. The wall between Ben’s bedroom and the hidden printing press was almost completely destroyed. Languorous summer drizzle had been falling through the burst skylight onto the shattered skeleton of the press.

Derkhan’s face had hardened. She had searched with a fervent intensity. She had unearthed small pieces of evidence, small proofs that this was once where a man had lived. She brought them out now, put them on the table before Umma Balsum.

She had found his razor, with a little stubble and bloodrust still staining its blade. The torn remnants of a pair of trousers. A piece of paper discoloured with his blood from where she had rubbed and rubbed it against a red stain on the wall. The last two issues of Runagate Rampant that she had found under the ruins of his bed.

Umma Balsum watched the pathetic collection emerge.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I…I think he’s in the Spike,” said Derkhan.

“Well, that’s going to cost you an extra noble straight off,” said Umma Balsum tartly. “Don’t like tangling with the law. Talk me through this stuff.”

Derkhan showed her each of the pieces she had brought. Umma Balsum nodded at each briefly, but seemed particularly interested in the issues of RR.

“He wrote for this, did he?” she asked keenly, fingering the papers.

“Yes.” Derkhan did not volunteer the information that he edited it. She was nervous of breaking the taboo against naming names, even though she had been assured that the communicatrix was trustworthy. Umma Balsum’s livelihood depended for the most part on contacting people in the militia’s possession. Selling out her clients would be a financial miscalculation. “This-” Derkhan turned to the central column, with the headline What We Think”-he wrote this.”

“Ahhh…” said Umma Balsum. “Shame you don’t have it in his original scripture. But this ain’t bad. Got anything else peculiar on him?”

“He has a tattoo. Above his left bicep. Like this.” Derkhan brought out the sketch she had made of the ornate anchor decoration.

“Sailor?”

Derkhan smiled mirthlessly.

“Got discharged and banged up without setting foot on a ship. Got drunk when he joined up and insulted his captain before the tattoo was even dry.” She remembered him telling the story.

“Righto,” said Umma Balsum. “Two marks for the attempt. Five marks connection fee if I get him, then two stivers a minute while we’re linked. And a noble on account of he’s in the Spike. Acceptable?” Derkhan nodded. It was expensive, but this kind of thaumaturgy was not just a question of learning a few passes. With enough training, anyone could effect the odd fumbling hex, but this kind of psychic channelling took a prodigious birth-talent and years of arduous study. Appearances and surroundings notwithstanding, Umma Balsum was no less a thaumaturgic expert than a senior Remaker or chimerist. Derkhan fumbled for her purse. “Pay after. We’ll see if we get through first.” Umma Balsum rolled up her left sleeve. Her flesh dimpled and wobbled loosely. “Draw me that tattoo. Make it as like the original as you can.” She nodded, indicating Derkhan to a stool in the corner of the room on which rested a palette with a collection of brushes and coloured inks.

Derkhan brought the materials over. She began to sketch onto Umma Balsum’s arm. She cast her mind back desperately, trying to get the colours exactly right. It took her about twenty-five minutes to finish her attempt. The anchor she had drawn was a little more garish than Benjamin’s (partly a consequence of the quality of the inks), and perhaps somewhat squatter. Nonetheless, she was sure that anyone who knew the original would recognize hers as a copy of it. She sat back, tentatively satisfied.

Umma Balsum waved her arm like a fat chicken’s wing, drying the inks. She fiddled with the remnants of Benjamin’s bedroom.

“…bloody unhygenic bloody way to make a living…” she murmured, just loud enough for Derkhan to hear. Umma Balsum picked up Benjamin’s razor and, holding it with a practised grip, nicked herself slightly on the chin. She rubbed the bloodstained paper against her cut. Then she lifted up her skirt and pulled the trouser leg as far onto her fat thighs as it would go.

Umma Balsum reached under the table and brought out a leather and darkwood box. She set it on the table and opened it.

Inside was a tight, interlocking tangle of valves and tubes and wires, looping over and under each other in an incredibly dense engine. At its top was a ridiculous-looking brass helmet, with a kind of trumpet attachment jutting from the front. The helmet was tethered to the box by a long coiled wire.

Umma Balsum reached out and extracted the helmet. She hesitated, then placed it on her head. She fastened the leather straps. From some hidden place inside the box she pulled out a large handle, which slotted neatly into a hexagonal hole at the side of the boxed engine. Umma Balsum placed the box at the edge of the table nearest Derkhan. She attached the engine to a chymical battery.

“Righto,” said Umma Balsum, dabbing absentmindedly at her still-dripping chin. “Now, you’ll have to get this going by winding that handle. Once the battery kicks in, you keep an eye on it. If it starts to play up, start winding that handle again. You let that current falter, we lose the connection, and without careful disengagement your mate risks losing his mind, and what’s worse so do I. So watch it close…Also, if we make contact, tell him not to move around or I’ll run out of cable.” She rattled the wire which attached her helmet to the engine. “Got me?” Derkhan nodded. “Right. Give me that thing he wrote. I’m going to get into character, try and harmonize. Start winding, and don’t stop till the battery takes over.”

Umma Balsum stood and picked up her chair, shoving it back against the wall, puffing. Then she turned and stood in the relatively open space. She visibly braced herself, then drew a stopwatch out of her pocket, pressed the stud which turned it on and nodded at Derkhan.