Isaac was staring uneasily at the vast creature one warm day in late Melluary. It was, he decided, more than prodigious. It was more than a very big caterpillar. It was definitely a monster. He resented it for being so damn interesting. Otherwise he could have just forgotten about it.

The door below him was pushed open, and Yagharek appeared in the shafts of early sun. It was rare, very rare for the garuda to come before nightfall. Isaac started and leapt to his feet, beckoning his client up the stairs.

“Yag, old son! Long time no see! I was drifting. I need you to tether me. Get on up here.”

Yagharek mounted the stairs wordlessly.

“How do you know when Lub and David are going to be out, eh?” asked Isaac. “You keep watch, or something creepy, right? Damn, Yag, you’ve got to stop skulking around like a fucking mugger.”

“I would talk to you, Grimnebulin.” Yagharek’s voice was oddly tentative.

“Fire away, old son.” Isaac sat and watched him. He knew by now that Yagharek would not sit.

Yagharek took off his cloak and wing-frame and turned to Isaac with folded arms. Isaac understood this to be as close as Yagharek would ever get to expressing trust, standing with his deformity in full view, making no effort to cover himself. Isaac supposed he should feel flattered.

Yagharek was eyeing him sideways.

“There are people in the night-city where I live, Grimnebulin, from many kinds of lives. It is not all flotsam that hide themselves.”

“I never presumed it was…” Isaac began, but Yagharek twitched his head impatiently, and Isaac was silent.

“Many nights I spend in silence and alone, but there are other times I talk to those with minds still sharp under a patina of alcohol and loneliness and drugs.” Isaac wanted to say, “I’ve said we could work out a place for you to stay,” but he stopped himself. Isaac wanted to see where this was heading. “There is a man, an educated, drunken man. I am not sure he believes me real. He may think me a recurring hallucination.” Yagharek breathed deeply. “I spoke to him about your theories, your crisis, and I was excited.

And the man said to me…the man said to me ‘Why not go all the way? Why not use the Torque?’ ”

There was a very long silence. Isaac shook his head in exasperation and disgust.

“I am here to put the question to you, Grimnebulin,” Yagharek continued. “Why do we not use the Torque? You are trying to create a science from scratch, Grimnebulin, but Torquic energy exists, techniques to tap it are known…I ask as an ignorant, Grimnebulin. Why do you not use the Torque?”

Isaac sighed very deeply and kneaded his face. Part of him was angry, but mostly he was just anxious, desperate to put a stop to this talk immediately. He turned to the garuda, and held up his hand.

“Yagharek…” he began, and at that moment, there was a bang on the door.

“Hello?” a cheerful voice yelled. Yagharek stiffened. Isaac leapt to his feet. The timing was extraordinary.

“Who is it?” yelled Isaac, bounding down the stairs.

A man poked his face round the door. He looked amiable, almost absurdly so.

“Hullo there, squire. I’ve come about the construct.”

Isaac shook his head. He had no idea what the man was talking about. He glanced up behind him, but Yagharek was invisible. He had stepped out of sight away from the edge of the platform. The man in the doorway handed Isaac a card.

nathaniel orriaben’s

construct repairs and replacements

quality amp; care at reasonable rates.

“Gent came in yesterday. Name of…Serachin?” suggested the man, reading from a sheet. “Told us his cleaning model…um…EKB4c was playing up. Thought it might have a virus and whatnot. I was due tomorrow, but I’ve just come back from another job local and I thought I’d chance that someone was in.” The man smiled brightly. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his oily coveralls.

“Right,” said Isaac. “Um…Look. Not the best time…”

“Righto! Your decision, obviously. Only…” The man looked around him before he went on, as if he was about to share a secret. Reassured that no one would hear him who should not, he went on, confidentially. “Thing is, squire, I may not be able to do the appointment tomorrow as originally planned…” The face he offered was cod-apology of the most exaggerated kind. “I can happily do my thing over in the corner, won’t make a sound. Take me about an hour if I can do it here, otherwise it’s a job for the repair shop. I’ll know which in five minutes. Otherwise I shan’t be able to do it for a week, I think.”

“Oh, arse. Right…Look, I’m in a meeting upstairs, and it’s absolutely vital that you don’t interrupt us. Seriously. Is that going to be all right?”

“Oh, absolutely. I’m just going to take the screwdriver to the old cleaner and then give you a little yell when I know what the score is, all right?”

“Right. So I can just leave you to it?”

“Perfecto.” The man was already heading towards the cleaning construct, carrying a toolcase. Lublamai had turned the cleaner on that morning, and punched in instructions for it to wash his study area, but it had been a forlorn hope. The construct had puttered in circles for twenty minutes, then stopped, leaning against the wall. It was still there, three hours later, emitting unhappy little clicks, its three attachment-limbs spasming.

The repairman strode over to the thing, muttering and clucking like a concerned parent. He felt the construct’s limbs, flipped a fob-watch out of his pocket and timed the twitching. He scribbled something in a little notebook. He swivelled the cleaning construct to face him, and gazed into one of its glass irises. He moved his pencil slowly from one side to another, watching the tracking of the sensory engine.

Isaac was half watching the repairman, but his attention kept flickering back upstairs to where Yagharek waited. This business with the Torque, Isaac thought nervously. It can’t wait.

“So you all right there?” Isaac shouted nervously at the repairman.

The man was opening his case and taking out a large screwdriver. He looked up at Isaac.

“No problem, guv,” he said, and waved his screwdriver cheerfully. He looked back at the construct and shut it off at the switch behind the neck. Its anguished creaks died in a grateful whisper. He began to unscrew the panel behind the thing’s “head,” a roughcast chunk of grey metal at the top of its cylindrical body.

“Right then,” said Isaac, and jogged back up the stairs.

Yagharek was standing by Isaac’s desk, well out of sight of the floor below. He looked up as Isaac returned.

“It’s nothing,” said Isaac quietly. “Someone to fix our construct, which has gone belly-up. I’m just wondering if we’re going to be heard…”

Yagharek opened his mouth to reply, and a thin, discordant whistling sounded up from the floor below. Yagharek’s mouth hung open for a moment, stupidly.

“Looks like we needn’t have worried,” Isaac said, and grinned. He’s doing that deliberately! he thought. So’s to let me know he’s not listening. Polite of him. Isaac inclined his head in unseen thanks to the repairman.

Then his mind returned to the business in hand, to Yagharek’s tentative suggestion, and his smile vanished. He sat heavily on his bed, ran his hands through his thick hair and stared up at Yagharek.

“You never sit, Yag, do you?” he said quietly. “Now why’s that?”

He drummed his fingers against the side of his head and thought. Eventually he spoke.

“Yag, old son…You’ve already impressed me as to your…amazing library, right? I want to throw two names out there, see what they mean to you. What do you know about Suroch, or the Cacotopic Stain?”

There was a long silence. Yagharek was looking slightly up, through the window.