The flight-styles of the liberated animals were as distinct as their silhouetted forms. One dark shape flitted chaotically around the sky, sinking towards a streetlamp, unable to resist the light: a fell-moth. Another rose with a majestic simplicity and arced into the night: some bird of prey. This one opened momentarily like a flower then squeezed and jetted away with a squirt of discoloured air: one of the small wind-polyps.

Bodies of the exhausted and the dying fell out of the air with a little patter of flesh. The ground below would be discoloured with blood and ichor, Isaac realized. There were gentle splashes as the Canker claimed victims. But there was more life than death. For a few days, a few weeks, Isaac mused, the sky over New Crobuzon would be more colourful.

Isaac sighed beatifically. He looked around and ran over to the few boxes of cocoons and eggs and grubs. He shoved them over to the window, leaving only the big, dying, multicoloured caterpillar undisturbed.

Isaac grabbed handfuls of eggs and hurled them out of the window after the fleeing shapes. He followed them with caterpillars that twisted and jack-knifed as they fell towards the paved ground. He shook cages that rattled with delicate pupating shapes, and emptied them out of the window. He poured out a tank of waterborn larvae. For these young, it was a cruel liberation, a few seconds of freedom and rushing air.

Eventually, when the last tiny shape had disappeared below, Isaac closed the window. He turned back and surveyed the warehouse. He heard a faint drone of wings, and saw a few airborne shapes circulating the lamps. An aspis, a handful of moths or butterflies, and a couple of small birds. Well, he thought, they’ll find their own way out, or they won’t last long and I can clear them out when they starve.

Littering the floor in front of the window were some of the runts and the dying, the weaklings, that had fallen before they could fly. Some were dead. Most crawled feebly this way and that. Isaac set to cleaning them out.

“You have the advantage that you are (a) rather beautiful; and (b) rather interesting, old chum,” he said to the huge, sickly grub as he worked. “No, no, don’t thank me. Just consider me a philanthrope. And also, I don’t understand why you don’t eat. You’re my project,” he said, jettisoning a dustpan full of feebly crawling bodies into the night air. “I doubt you’ll last the night, but fuck it, you’ve appealed to my pity and my curiosity and I’ll have one last stab at rescuing you.”

There was a shuddering bang. The door to the warehouse had been hurled open.

“Grimnebulin!”