“That’s a list of everything we need,” he said. “It’s all bound to be in the dump somewhere, or it can be rigged up. Do you have some . . . uh . . . some little yous somewhere that can track this stuff down? Another couple of those helmets you got for us, the ones communicators use; a couple of batteries; a little generator; stuff like that. Again, we need that now. The main thing is we need cable. Thick conducting cable, stuff that can take elyctrical or thaumaturgic current. We need two and a half, three miles of the stuff. Not all in one, obviously . . . it can be in pieces, as long as they can be connected easily one to the next, but we need masses. We have to link you up with our . . . with our focus.” His voice quietened as he said this, and his face set. “The cable has to be ready this evening, by six o’clock I think.”

Isaac’s face was hard. He spoke in a monotone. He looked at the avatar carefully.

“There’s only four of us, and one of those we can’t rely on,” he went on. “Can you contact your . . . congregation?” The avatar nodded slowly, waiting for an explanation. “See, we need people to connect those cables across the city.” Isaac tugged the list out of the avatar’s hands and began to sketch on the back: a jagged sideways Y for the two rivers, little crosses for Griss Twist, The Crow, and scribbles delineating Brock Marsh and Spit Hearth in between. He linked the first two crosses with a quick slash of pencil. He looked up at the avatar. “You’re going to have to organize your congregation. Fast. We need them in place with the cable by six o’clock.”

“Why do you not perform the operation here?” asked the avatar. Isaac shook his head vaguely.

“It wouldn’t work. This is a backwater. We have to channel the power through the city’s focal point, where all the lines converge.

“We have to go to Perdido Street Station.”

Chapter 47

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Carrying a bloated sack of discarded technology between them, Isaac and Yagharek crept back through the quiet streets of Griss Twist, up the broken brick stairwell of the Sud Line. Like shambling city vagrants in clothes ill-suited to the sweltering air, they trudged a path through the skyline of New Crobuzon, back to their collapsing hideout by the railway line. They waited for a squealing onrush of train to pass, blowing energetically from its flared chimney, then picked their way through fences of wavering air poured upwards from the scalding iron tracks.

It was midday, and the air wrapped them like a heated poultice.