Militia were coming. People were prepared, and they ran. Ori ran too, but not for the doors or the broken fence. He went straight for the speaker.

Pushed past the bickering Caucus members who surrounded him. Some recognised Ori, stared at him with greeting or query stillborn as he went past them to the raging soldier-Jack. Ori put is name and his address into the speaker’s pocket, and whispered.

"Who’ll take them out?" he said. "We will. These lot won’t. Come find me."

And then there was the burring of propellers and an airship protruded over them. Ropes spilled down and dribbled armoured militia. There were the sounds of dogs. The gates of the Paradox Warehouse were too full of people, and there was a panic. "Men-o’-war!" someone shouted, and yes there slowly rising to swell over the walls were the grotesque gland-bodies contoured with extrusions and organic holes, ridden by militia manipulating the exposed nerves of the giant filament-dangling things, flying them sedately toward the crews of Caucusists, the toxin in their tendrils dripping. Ori ran.

There would be other militia squads on the street: shunnriders, plainclothes infiltrators. Ori had to take care. He itched at the sense that some sharpshooter might target him from the airship. But he knew the ways through these streets. Most of the audience had already disappeared in New Crobuzon’s brick tangles, careering past startled shop holders and corner-hanging vagrants to stop suddenly and walk like everyone else was walking, a few streets on. Later, a mile away on the other side of the river, Ori heard that no one had been captured or killed, and was savagely delighted.

The soldier’s name was Baron. He told Ori without any sense of the secrecy and care with which the dissidents did their business. He turned up two nights later. When Ori opened his door to him, Baron was holding Ori’s paper. "Tell me then," Baron had said. "What is it you’ll do? Who the fuck are you, chaver?"

"How come they ain’t got you yet?" Ori asked. Baron said there were hundreds of militia gone AWOL. Most of those planning to go into hiding were keeping their heads down, readying for the black survivalist economy of New Crobuzon, staying out of sight of their erstwhile colleagues. With the chaos in the city, he said, it would be impossible for the militia to keep track of all their men. No day passed without a strike or riot: the numbers of the unemployed were growing, there were attacks on xenians by Quillers and on Quillers by xenians and dissidents. Some in Parliament were arguing for compromise, meeting the guilds.

"I ain’t hiding," said Baron. "I don’t care."