Derkhan began to wind the handle. It was mercifully smooth. She felt oiled gears inside the box begin to connect and catch, calculated tension biting against her arm, powering up the esoteric mechanisms. Umma Balsum had dropped the stopwatch on the table, was holding RR in her right hand, reading Benjamin’s words in an inaudible whisper, her lips moving quickly. She held her left hand slightly raised, and its fingers danced a complicated quadrille, inscribing some thaumaturgic symbols in the air.

When she reached the end of his article she simply returned to the beginning and began it again, in an endless quick loop.

The current flowed around and around the coiled wire, visibly jolting Umma Balsum, setting her head vibrating very slightly for a few seconds. She dropped the paper, continuing to recite Benjamin’s words sotto voce from memory. She turned slowly, her eyes quite vacant, shuffling her feet. As she turned, there was a second when the trumpet at the front of her helmet was directly pointed at Derkhan. For a split second, Derkhan felt a pulse of weird sethereo-mental waves buffet her psyche. She reeled slightly, but continued to turn the handle, until she felt another force take it and move it on, and she gently released her hand and watched it go. Umma Balsum moved until she was facing the north-west, until she was aligned with the Spike, out of sight in the centre of the city.

Derkhan watched the battery and the engine, made sure it maintained a steady circuit.

Umma Balsum closed her eyes. Her lips moved. The air in the room seemed to sing like a wine glass stroked on its rim.

Then, suddenly, her body jerked violently. She shuddered. Her eyes snapped open.

Derkhan stared at the communicatrix.

Umma Balsum’s lank hair twisted like a boxful of bait worms. It slid back from her forehead and snaked backwards, into an approximation of the greased-down backwards sweep that Benjamin affected when he was not working. A ripple passed through Umma Balsum, from her feet up. It was as if a lightning tide swept along her subcutaneous fat, altering it slightly as it passed. When it had passed out through the crown of her head, her whole body had changed. She was no fatter, and no thinner, but the distribution of tissue had subtly modified her shape. She looked a little broader in the shoulders. Her jawline was more pronounced, and her ample jowls were somehow minimized.

Bruises flowered on her face.

She stood for a second, then collapsed suddenly onto all fours. Derkhan let out a little cry, but she saw that Umma Balsum’s eyes were still open and focused.

Umma Balsum sat suddenly with her legs splayed out, her back leaning against the sofa’s arm.

Her eyes moved slowly up as a furrow of incomprehension ploughed her face. She looked up at Derkhan, still frantically staring. Umma Balsum’s mouth (now firmer and thinner lipped) opened in what looked like astonishment.

“Dee?” she hissed in a voice that oscillated with a deeper echo.

Derkhan gawped at Umma Balsum idiotically.

“Ben…?” she faltered.

“How did you get in here?” hissed Umma Balsum, rising quickly. She squinted at Derkhan in awe. “I can see through you…”

“Ben, listen to me.” Derkhan realized she had to calm him down. “Stop moving. You’re seeing me through a communicatrix who’s harmonized with you. She’s shut herself down into a totally passive recipient state so I can talk straight to you. D’you understand?”

Umma Balsum, who was Ben, nodded quickly. She stopped moving, and sank again to her/his knees. “Where are you?” she whispered.

“In Brock Marsh, down by the Coil. Ben, we don’t have much time. Where are you? What happened? Have they…have they…hurt you?” Derkhan exhaled tremulously, her tension and despair sweeping through her.

Two miles away Ben shook his head miserably, and Derkhan saw it in front of her.

“Not yet,” whispered Ben. “They’ve left me alone…for a while…”

“How did they know where you were?” hissed Derkhan again.

“Jabber, Dee, they’ve always known, haven’t they? I had fucking Rudgutter in here earlier, and he…and he was laughing at me. Telling me they’d always known where RR was, just couldn’t be bothered to pick us up.”

“It was the strike…” said Derkhan miserably. “They decided we’d gone too far…”

“No.”

Derkhan looked up sharply. Ben’s voice, or the approximation that emerged from Umma Balsum’s mouth, was hard and clear. The eyes that gazed at her were steady and urgent.

“No, Dee, it ain’t the strike. Dammit, I only wish we had the kind of impact on the strike that worried them. No, that’s a fucking cover story…”

“So what…?” began Derkhan hesitantly. Ben interrupted her.

“I’ll tell you what I know. After I got here, Rudgutter comes in and he’s waving Double-R at me. And you know what he’s pointing at? That really fucking tentative story we had in the second section. ‘Rumours of Fat Sun Deal With Top Mobster.’ You know, the one from that contact I had that was saying the government sold some shit or other, some failed science project, to some crim. Nothing! We had nothing! It was just shit-stirring we were doing! And Rudgutter’s waving it around, and he…he’s shoving it in my face…” Umma Balsum’s eyes slid away into reverie for a moment as Ben remembered. “He’s on and on at me. ‘What d’ye know about this, Mr. Flex? Who’s your source? What do you know about the moths?’ Seriously! Moths, as in butterflies! ‘What do you know about Mr. M.’s recent problems?’ ”

Ben shook Umma Balsum’s head slowly. “Did you get all that? Dee, I dunno what the fuck we’re onto here, but we’ve opened up some story which…Jabber!…which’s got Rudgutter crapping himself. That’s why he took me! He kept saying ‘If you know where the moths are, it’d be best to tell me.’ Dee…” Ben staggered carefully to his feet. Derkhan opened her mouth to warn him about moving away, but her words died as he moved carefully towards her on Umma Balsum’s legs. “Dee, you have to chase this. They’re scared, Dee. They’re really scared. We’ve got to use this. I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was on about, but I think he thought I was acting, and I started milking it, ‘cause it was making him uncomfortable.”

Tentatively, carefully, nervously, Ben reached out with Umma Balsum’s hands towards Derkhan. Derkhan’s throat caught as she saw that Ben was crying. Tears rolled down his face without him making a sound. She bit her lip.

“What’s that whirring noise, Dee?” asked Ben.

“It’s the motor to the communicating engine. It has to keep going,” she said.

Umma Balsum’s head nodded.

Her hands touched Derkhan’s. Derkhan trembled at the touch. She felt Ben clutch her free hand, kneeling before her.

“I can feel you…” Ben smiled. “You’re only half visible, like a fucking spook…but I can feel you.” He stopped smiling and groped for words. “Dee…I…they’re going to kill me. Oh Jabber…” he breathed out. “I’m scared. I know these…scum…will use pain on me…” His shoulders shuddered up and down as he lost control of his sobs. He was silent for a minute, looking down, weeping silently for fear. When he looked up, his voice was solid.

“Fuck ‘em! We’ve got the bastards running scared, Dee. You’ve got to chase it! I hereby appoint you editor of fucking Runagate Rampant…” He grinned fleetingly. “Listen. Go to Mafaton. I’ve only met her twice, in cafes near there, but I think that’s where she lives, the contact-we met late, and I doubt she’d have wanted to find her way back across the city on her own after, so I’m figuring she’s from round there. Her name’s Magesta Barbile. She hasn’t told me much. Just that some project she was working on in R amp;D-she’s a scientist-the government terminated and sold off to a crime boss. I thought it could all be a wind-up; I published out of fucking mischief more than ‘cause it was a real story. But my gods, the reaction vindicates it.”