As each construct connected the empty-skulled man would jerk and his eyes would glaze for a moment.

“I grow,” he whispered. “I grow. My processing power fattens exponentially. I learn . . . I know of your troubles. I have connected to your cleaner. It was collapsing. I have brought it into the intelligence. It is one of I now, completely assimilated.” The man pointed back at the rough outlines of hips in the giant construct-skeleton. With a start, Isaac realized that the flattened metal outline that bulged slightly from the body like a cyst was the reshaped body of the cleaning construct.

“I learnt from it as from no other me,” said the man. “I am still calculating the variables implied by its fragmentary vision from the Weaver’s back. It has been my most important I.”

“Why are we here?” hissed Derkhan. “What does this damned thing want from us?”

More and more constructs were downloading their experiences into the Council’s mind. The avatar, the ragged man who spoke for it, hummed tunelessly as the information flooded its banks.

Eventually, all the constructs had completed their connection. They took the cables from their valves and moved back again. When they saw this, several of the human watchers came nervously forward, bearing programme cards and analytical engines the size of suitcases. They grabbed the cables the constructs had dropped, connected them to their calculating machines.

After two or three minutes this process was also complete. When the humans had stepped back, the avatar’s eyes whipped up until only white showed under his lids. His lidless head shook as the Council assimilated everything.

After a minute or so of wordless shivering, he suddenly snapped to. His eyes opened and stared alertly around him.

“Bloodlife congregation!” he shouted to the assembled humans. They rose quickly. “Here are your instructions and your sacraments.” From the stomach of the great construct behind him, from the output slots of the original programme-printer, slipped card after card, all punched meticulously. They fell into a wooden crate that sat above the construct’s sexless groin like a marsupial’s pouch.

In another part of the trunk, embedded at an angle between an oil-drum and a rusting engine, a typewriter stuttered at breakneck speed. A great coiling ream of paper spewed forth, printed closely, and below it a pair of scissors shot out on a tight spring like a predatory fish. They snapped closed, cutting off a sheet from the ream, then bounced back, thrust out again and repeated the operation. Little sheets of religious instruction fluttered down from the blades to lie alongside the programme cards.