A swarm of nightmare feelings pattered down among them with the rain.

“They’re up and out,” said Derkhan with terror. “They’re hunting. They’re abroad. Hurry, you have to hurry . . .”

Isaac nodded without speaking and continued with what he was doing, shaking his head as if that might disperse the cloying fear that had settled on him. Where’s the fucking Weaver? he thought.

“Someone watches us from below,” said Yagharek suddenly, “some tramp who did not run. He does not move.”

Isaac glanced up again, then returned his attention to his work.

“Take my gun there,” he hissed. “If he comes up towards us, warn him off with a shot. Hopefully he’ll keep his distance.” Still his hands rushed to twist, to connect, to programme. He punched numbered keypads and wrestled roughcut cards into slots. “Nearly there,” he murmured, “nearly there.”

The sense of nocturnal pressure, of drifting in sour dreams, increased.

“Isaac . . .” hissed Derkhan. Andrej had fallen into a kind of terrified, exhausted half-sleep, and he began to moan and thrash, his eyes opening and shutting with bleary vagueness.

“Done!” spat Isaac, and stepped back.

There was a silent moment. Isaac’s triumph dissipated quickly.

“We need the Weaver!” he said. “It’s supposed to . . . it said it would be here! We can’t do anything without it . . .”

They could do nothing except wait.

The stench of twisted dream-imagery grew and grew, and brief screams sounded from random points across the city, as sleeping sufferers called out their fear or defiance. The rain fell thicker, until the concrete underfoot was slick. Isaac laid the greasy sack ineffectually across various sections of the crisis circuit, moving it in agitation, trying to protect his machine from the water.

Yagharek watched the glistening roofscape. When his head became too full of fearful dreams and he grew afraid of what he might see, he turned on his heel and watched through the mirrors on his helmet. He kept watch on the dim, immobile figure below.

Isaac and Derkhan dragged Andrej a little closer to the circuit (again with that ghastly gentleness, as if concerned for his wellbeing). Under Derkhan’s gun, Isaac retied the old man’s hands and legs, and fastened one of the communicator helmets tight to his head. He did not look at Andrej’s face.

The helmet had been adjusted. As well as its flared output on the top, it had three input jacks. One connected it to the second helmet. Another was connected by several skeins of wires to the calculating brains and generators of the crisis engine.

Isaac wiped the third connection briefly free of filthy rainwater, and plugged into it the thick wire extending from the black circuit-breaker, attached to which was the massive cable extending all the way to the Construct Council, south of the river. Current could flow from the Council’s analytical brain, through the one-way switch, into Andrej’s helmet.