“Vermishank,” he said softly, and stared at the other man. “How do we get their minds back? The ones who’ve been taken.”

“Back?” Vermishank seemed genuinely baffled. “Ah . . .” He shook his head and furrowed his eyes. “You cannot.”

“Don’t lie to me . . .” screamed Isaac, thinking of Lublamai.

“They have been drunk,” hissed Vermishank, and brought silence quickly to the room. He waited.

“They have been drunk,” he said again. “Their thoughts have been taken, their dreams—their conscious and subconscious—have been burnt up in the moths’ stomachs, have trickled out again to feed the grubs. Have you taken dreamshit, Isaac? Any of you?” No one, least of all Isaac, would answer him. “If you have, you have dreamed them, the victims, the prey. You have had their metabolized minds slip into your stomach and you have dreamed them. There is nothing left to save. There is nothing to get back.”

Isaac felt absolute despair.

Take his body too, he thought, Jabber, don’t be cruel, don’t leave me with that fucking shell that I can’t let die, that means nothing . . .

“How do we kill the slake-moths?” he hissed.

Vermishank smiled, very slowly.

“You cannot,” he said.

“Don’t bullshit me,” hissed Isaac. “Everything that lives can die . . .”

“You misunderstand me. As an abstract proposition of course they can die. And therefore, theoretically, they can be killed. But you will not be able to kill them. They live in several planes, as I’ve said, and bullets, fire, and so forth injure only in one. You would have to hit them in many dimensions at once, or do the most extraordinary amount of damage in this one, and they will not give you the chance . . . Do you understand?”

“So let’s think laterally . . .” said Isaac. He batted his temples hard with the heels of his hands. “What about a biological control? Predators . . .”

“They have none. They are at the top of their food chain. We’re fairly sure that there are animals, in their native land, that are capable of killing them, but there are none within several thousand miles of here. And anyway, if we’re right, to unleash them would be to usher doom more quickly onto New Crobuzon.”

“Dear Jabber,” breathed Isaac. “Without predators or competitors, with a massive supply of food, fresh and constantly replenished . . . There’ll be no stopping them.”

“And that,” whispered Vermishank hesitantly, “is before we’ve even considered what’ll happen if they . . . They are still young, you understand. They are not fully mature. But soon, when the nights become hot . . . We have to consider what might happen when they breed . . .”

The room seemed to go still and cold. Again Vermishank tried to control his face, but again, Isaac saw the raw fear inside him. Vermishank was terrified. He knew what was at stake.