"Just come with me then if you want," he had said to Ann-Hari. "Prove me wrong. You can always come back. But if I’m right, I’m telling you… I’m telling you Judah has something planned." And though Ann-Hari had been exasperated there was in his urgency and the uncertain valence of his concern-was he excited, anxious, angry?-something that struck her and had her ride with him.

He had failed Judah, and he had to see him, unsure as he was what he sought to do-to persuade Judah to turn the Council if he could, to explain himself, to have him accept Cutter’s regret that he had failed. When the horse-guards blocked him he demanded they summon Ann-Hari. "You have to let me go," he said. "Give me a fucking horse. Judah’s ahead! I have to see him!"

She affected impatience but he saw her start. She said she would come. "Whatever. Escort me if you don’t trust me, I don’t care, but there’s only a few hours left, and I have to fucking see him."

What’s he doing?

Then. In the lands nearest New Crobuzon. Where rivers crossed under the raised road, and the stones that gave cover were gnawed by acid rain. Foothills stretched out their legs and rucked up the land in untidy grass, where the piceous thick of Rudewood like a black and black-green rash tided toward the train’s path and even in places stretched sparse little hands of forest to the edges of the track. Cutter, Rahul and Ann-Hari passed through trees and tree-shadow.

The perpetual train was quickly invisible behind them, the rails, newly renewed, meandering. Cutter rode as if he were alone, beside the metal raised like proud flesh, like slub in the land’s weft. There were some refugees still lining the iron who waved him on, but most had run to be with the train itself. He ignored the halloos- Where’s the Council? Come to save us? They’re ahead, boy, be careful. He kept his stare to the tracks, the trackside. The train was no more than an hour behind him.

He felt as if New Crobuzon sucked him in, as if its gravity-the denseness of brick, cement, wood, iron, the vista of roofs, stippling of smoke and chymical lights-as if its gravity took him. The stoned land rose like floodtide toward the line, and Cutter’s horse descended past a place where the roadbed and the country were level. Rahul was beside him. By a meadow of boulders Cutter saw a barge passing. They were near the farmlands. He watched the trackside. The occasional mechanism where a signal might have stood, some meter to read the speed or passage of trains. Here a clutch of stones and metal debris in the train’s path or by its side.