-You’ve done it, Judah says. Uzman and Ann-Hari are unblinking at his praise. -Got us out. And now you’re in this strange place.

-It isn’t finished yet.

-No, it ain’t. But you’ll be all right. You will. You will. There must be a place beyond this. A place far enough. They won’t follow you. You’ll cross, right across the world. Where there’s fruit and meat. Where the train can stop. You can hunt, fish, rear cattle-I don’t know. You can read, and when you’ve read the books in the library car you should write others. You got to get there.

-But what’s here? What’ll come for us here?

-I don’t know. It’ll be hard, but you’ll get through. Judah does not know why he is speaking like a prophet. It is not him who speaks; it is his thing inside, his innard good. -They won’t follow you in. I’ll lay money.

They laughed at that. Money was ornament now. There were those who still hoarded it, but it was notepaper for the children. It was jewellery.

-And Uzman was right, even though he was wrong, Judah says. -We should have got word to New Crobuzon. Think on it. No one might know.

There is silence. -You might tell no one, just disappear, and all they’d say is that once, when they was building the railroad, the train just went. The Remade went fReemade and took the train with them. You want more than that. The Remade in the city, waiting, they deserve more.

-There’s those as know what happened…

-Yes but will they do it right? You’ll be rumour-that can’t be altered-but what kind of rumour? Do you want to be a rumour that won’t die? That matters? Do you want them to shout the council’s name when they strike?

Ann-Hari smiles.

Judah says, -I’ll go back. I’ll be your bard.

Some of them say at first that it is cowardice, that he is afraid to come with them across the little purlieu of the cacotopos, but none of them really believe him cowardly. They are sorry that he is leaving them.

-We need your golems, a woman says.

-How can you go? Don’t you care for the council, Judah?

Judah rounds at that.

-You ask me that? he says. -You ask me that? He shames them.

-I’ll be your bard. I’ll tell them. Stay still. The powderflash goes and each of the gathered blinks.

In so alien a place, with the foreboding of the Torque, with the unnatural sky and the alterity of the cacotopic zone, even with the smokestone behind them there are some leaving the council.

-Some’ll make it, Judah says. -Go fReemade-they won’t go back to New Crobuzon, not Remade like that.