This ain’t about argument, Cutter thought. He was horrified by what seemed to him quiescence. If they tried to argue it, they’d lose… but even though they know that, they still go on… because in going against the facts, they change them. It was a methodology of decision utterly unlike his own, unlike how he could ever think. Was it rational? He could not tell.

The Iron Council progressed through a landscape made of mist. The scarps and hillocks, the layers of trees seemed momentary thickenings of water in the air, seemed to curdle out of the vapour as the perpetual train came, and dissipate again in its aftermath.

They moved through scenery that was abruptly familiar, that jogged old memories. This was New Crobuzon country. Siskins went between dripping haw-bushes. This was a New Crobuzon winter. They were a few weeks away.

"We had a man once, years and years ago," Ann-Hari said to Cutter. "When the Weaver came to us, before we was Council, and told us secrets. The man went mad, so he could only talk about the spider. He was like a prophet. But then he was boring, and then not even boring, just nothing. We didn’t even hear him, you see? We heard nothing when he spoke.

"You’re like that. ‘Turn back, turn back.’ " She smiled. "We don’t hear you no more, man."

I’ve a mission, Cutter thought. I’ve failed. Knowing that his lover had expected it did nothing to stop his sadness.

He became a ghost. He was respected-one of the world-crossers, who had come to save Iron Council. His dissidence now, his insistence that the Council would die, was treated with polite uninterest. I’m a ghost.

Cutter could have left. He could have taken a horse from the township’s stables and ridden. He would have found the foothills, the deserted tracks, Rudewood, he would have come to New Crobuzon. He could not. I’m here now was all he could think. He would run only when he had to.

He had seen the maps. The Council would go on east leaving spike-holes and the debris of track-pressed shale, recycling the iron road, and would at last hit the remains of the railway scores of miles south of New Crobuzon. And there they would couple to what remained of the old tracks, and steam on, and within hours would approach the city.

Cutter would run when he had to. But not now.

"We are a hope," Ann-Hari said.

Perhaps she’s right. The train will come, the last of the Collective will rise, and the government will fall.