“That’s it, that’s it,” said Isaac tensely. “Now we just need the fucking Weaver . . .”

It was another half an hour of rain and burgeoning nightmares before the dimensions of the roofspace rippled and shucked wildly, and the Weaver’s crooning monologue could be heard.

. . . AS THEE AND ME CONCURRED THE FAT FUNNELSPACE THE CLOT AT CITYWEB CENTRE SEES US CONFLAB . . . came the unearthly voice in all of their skulls, and the great spider stepped out lightly from the kink in the air and danced towards them, its shining body dwarfing them.

Isaac gave a barking breath, a sharp moan of relief. His mind juddered with the awe and terror the Weaver induced.

“Weaver!” he shouted. “Help us now!” He held out the other communicating helmet to the extraordinary presence.

Andrej had looked up and was shying away in a paroxysm of terror. His eyes bulged with the pressure of his blood and he began to retch behind his mask. He wriggled as fast as he could towards the edge of the roof, a terrible inhuman fear jack-knifing his body away.

Derkhan caught him and held him fast. He ignored her gun, his eyes empty of everything but the vast spider that loomed over him, peering down with slow portentous movements. Derkhan could hold him easily. His decaying muscles flexed and twisted ineffectually. She dragged him back and held him.

Isaac did not look at them. He held out the helmet to the Weaver beseechingly.

“We need you to put this on,” he said. “Put this on now! We can take them all. You said you’d help us . . . to repair the web . . . please.”

The rain sputtered against the Weaver’s hard shell. Every second or so, one or two random drops would sizzle violently and evaporate as they struck it. The Weaver kept talking, as it always did, an inaudible murmur that Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek could not understand.

It reached out with its smooth, human hands, and placed the helmet on its segmented head.

Isaac closed his eyes in brief exhausted relief, then opened them again.

“Keep it on!” he hissed. “Fasten it!”

With fingers that moved as elegantly as a master tailor’s, the spider did so.

. . . WILL YOU TICKLE AND TRICK . . . it gibbered . . . AS THINKLINGS TRICKLE THROUGH SLOSHING METAL AND MIX IN MIRE MY IRE MY MIRROR MYRIAD BURSTING BUBBLES OF BRAINWAVEFORMS AND WEAVING PLANS ON ON AND ONWARD MY MASTER CRAFTY CRAFTSMAN . . . and as the Weaver continued to croon with incomprehensible and dreamlike proclamations, Isaac saw the last fastening snap tight under its terrifying jaw, and he snapped on the switches that opened the circuit-valves on Andrej’s helmet, and he pulled the succession of levers that geared up the full processing power of the analytical calculators and the crisis engine, and he stepped back.

Extraordinary currents surged through the machinery assembled before them.

There was a very still moment, when even the rain seemed to pause.