“Righto,” said Umma Balsum, dabbing absent-mindedly at her still-dripping chin. “Now, you’ll have to get this going by winding that handle. Once the battery kicks in, you keep an eye on it. If it starts to play up, start winding that handle again. You let that current falter, we lose the connection, and without careful disengagement your mate risks losing his mind, and what’s worse so do I. So watch it close . . . Also, if we make contact, tell him not to move around or I’ll run out of cable.” She rattled the wire which attached her helmet to the engine. “Got me?” Derkhan nodded. “Right. Give me that thing he wrote. I’m going to get into character, try and harmonize. Start winding, and don’t stop till the battery takes over.”

Umma Balsum stood and picked up her chair, shoving it back against the wall, puffing. Then she turned and stood in the relatively open space. She visibly braced herself, then drew a stopwatch out of her pocket, pressed the stud which turned it on and nodded at Derkhan.

Derkhan began to wind the handle. It was mercifully smooth. She felt oiled gears inside the box begin to connect and catch, calculated tension biting against her arm, powering up the esoteric mechanisms. Umma Balsum had dropped the stopwatch on the table, was holding RR in her right hand, reading Benjamin’s words in an inaudible whisper, her lips moving quickly. She held her left hand slightly raised, and its fingers danced a complicated quadrille, inscribing some thaumaturgic symbols in the air.

When she reached the end of his article she simply returned to the beginning and began it again, in an endless quick loop.

The current flowed around and around the coiled wire, visibly jolting Umma Balsum, setting her head vibrating very slightly for a few seconds. She dropped the paper, continuing to recite Benjamin’s words sotto voce from memory. She turned slowly, her eyes quite vacant, shuffling her feet. As she turned, there was a second when the trumpet at the front of her helmet was directly pointed at Derkhan. For a split second, Derkhan felt a pulse of weird æthereo-mental waves buffet her psyche. She reeled slightly, but continued to turn the handle, until she felt another force take it and move it on, and she gently released her hand and watched it go. Umma Balsum moved until she was facing the north-west, until she was aligned with the Spike, out of sight in the centre of the city.

Derkhan watched the battery and the engine, made sure it maintained a steady circuit.

Umma Balsum closed her eyes. Her lips moved. The air in the room seemed to sing like a wine glass stroked on its rim.

Then, suddenly, her body jerked violently. She shuddered. Her eyes snapped open.

Derkhan stared at the communicatrix.