King Rat grabbed him and swung him back to face him. Saul slappedthe other’s hands down, his eyes wide and outraged. There was ahorrible unease moment as Saul and King Rat stared at each other theirshoulders wide, their fists ready to strike. Slow and deliberately,Saul reached up and pushed King on the chest, shoved him slightlyback.

His anger boiled up in him and he shoved King Rat again, growledand tried to make him fall. He punched him suddenly, hard, and imagesof his father raced through his mind. He felt a desperate desire tokill King Rat. It shocked him how fast the hatred could overtakehim.

King Rat was stumbling slightly on the uneven ground, and Saulreached down to snatch up a half brick. He bore down on King Rat,flailing brutally with his weapon.

He swung it at King Rat’s head, connecting and sending hisopponent sprawling, but King Rat hissed with rage as he fell. Herolled painfully across the shattered ground and swung his legs up atSaul, taking him down. The fight became a violent blur, a flurry ofarms and legs, nails and fists. Saul did not aim, did not plan; heflailed in rage, feeling blows and scratches bruise him and rip hisskin.

Blood exploded from a vicious strike below his eye and his headrocked. He slammed his brick down again but King Rat was not there,and the brick struck stone and burst into dust.

The two rolled and grappled. King Rat slid from Saul’s grip andhovered like a gadfly, ripping him open with a hundred cruelscratches and dancing out of the range of retaliation.

Saul’s frustration overwhelmed him. He suddenly broke off hisfrenzied attack with a shouted curse. He stalked away across therubble.

Another vicious half-fight. He could not kill him.

King Rat was too fast, too strong, and he would not engage Saulproperly, he would not risk killing Saul, King Rat wanted Saulalive, for all that he was growing to hate him for his followingamong the rats, for his refusal to obey him.

King Rat shouted scornfully after him. Saul could not even hearwhat he said.

He felt blood well from the deep scratches on his face and hewiped himself as he began to run, surefooted despite the terrain. Hethrew himself at one of the walls which overlooked him, scrambled upits tender surface, slipping by those unadorned windows, leaving along smear of blood and dirt on his way up the bricks.

He stared briefly behind him. King Rat sat forlornly on thehulking piles of cement. Saul turned away from him and set out overthe top of London. He looked around him as he moved, and sometimes hestopped and was still.

On the top of a school, somewhere behind Paddington, he saw harshsecurity lights catching on billowing cobweb suspended below therailings topped the building. The fragile thing was empty an longdeserted, but he lowered himself to the ground and stared around him.There were other, smaller webs below it, still inhabited, lessvisible without the accumulated dust of days.

He lowered his lips to these webs and spoke in a voice he knewsounded removed and intimate, like King Rat’s. The spiders were quitestill.

‘I need you to do what I say, now,’ he whispered. ‘I need you tofind Anansi, find your boss. Tell him I’m waiting for him. Tell him Ineed to see him.’

The little creatures were still for a long time. They seemed tohesitate. Saul lowered himself again.

‘Go on,’ he said, ‘spread the word.’

There was another moment’s hesitation, then the spiders, six orseven of them, tiny and fierce, took off at the same moment. Theyleft their webs together, on long threads, little abseiling specialforces, disappearing down the side of the building.

Fabian drifted on waves.

He was stuck very deep in his own head. His body made itself feltoccasionally, with a fart or a pain or an itch, but for the most parthe could forget it was even there. He was conscious of almost nothingexcept perpetual motion, a tireless pitch and yaw. He was not sure ifit was his body or only his mind which was lulled by the liquidmovement.

There was a Drum and Bass backdrop to the hypnagogic rolling. Thesoundtrack never stopped, the same bleak, washed-out track that hehad heard from Natasha’s stairs.

Sometimes he saw her face. She would lean over him, nodding gentlyin time to the beat, her eyes unfocused. Sometimes it was Pete’sface. He felt soup trickle down his throat and around his mouth, andhe swallowed obligingly.

Most of the time he lay back and surrendered to the rocking motionin his skull. He could see almost anything when he just lay back andlistened to the Jungle filtering from somewhere close by, twistingaround him in a tiny dark room, oppressive, stinking of rot.

He spent a lot of time looking at his artwork in progress. He wasnot always sure it was there, but when he thought of it and relaxedinto the beat, it invariably appeared, and then he would make plans,scribble charcoal additions in each corner. Changing this canvas wasso easy. He could never quite remember the moment when he drew, butthe changes appeared, bright and perfect.

He became more and more ambitious in his changes, going over oldground, rewriting the text at the centre of his piece. In no time atall it was changed beyond recognition, as smooth and perfect ascomputer graphics, and he stared at the legend he could not quiteremember choosing. Wind City, it said.

Fabian swallowed the food he found in his mouth and listened tothe music.

Natasha spent most of her time with her eyes closed. She didn’tneed to open them at all. Her fingers knew every inch of herkeyboard, and she spent her time playing Wind City, tweaking it,changing it in slight and subtle ways, to fit the exigencies of hermood.

Occasionally she would open her eyes and see with surprise thatshe stood in unfamiliar environs, that she was in the centre of adim, stinking space, that Fabian danced horizontally, lying downnearby, food drying on his face, and that her keyboard was not infront of her after all. But when she tweaked Wind City, it changedanyway, it did what she wanted, so she closed her eyes and continued,her fingers flying over the keys.

Sometimes Pete would come and feed her, and she would play himwhat she had done, still with her eyes closed.

The rats had given up in fear and confusion. The great cadres thathad set out earlier in the night had dried up, had slunk home to thesewers, but here and there the braver souls continued the search, asSaul had hoped they would.

In the streets of Camberwell they searched the catacombs of oldchurches. On the Isle of Dogs they ran past Blackwall Basin andscoured the decrepit business park. The rats worked their way alongthe great slit of the Jubilee Line extension, past vast hulkingmachines that tunnelled through the earth.

Their numbers dwindled. As the night wound on, more and more gavein to hunger and fear and forgetfulness. They could not work out whythey were running so hard. They could no longer remember what theirquarries looked like. One by one they slipped back into the sewers.Some fell prey to dogs and cars.

Soon there were only a very few rats left searching.

‘Little bird tell me you want talk to me, bwoy.’

Saul looked up.

Anansi descended from the bough of a tree above him. He movedelegantly, belying his size and weight, slipping smoothly down one ofhis ropes, utterly controlled.

Saul leaned back. He felt the cold weight of the gravestone behindhim.

He was sitting quietly in a small cemetery in Acton. It was a tinyspace that straddled the overland train line, tucked behind a smallindustrial estate. It was overlooked on all sides by uglyfunctionality, a set of grotesque flattened factories and suburbanwarehouses, uncomfortable in this residential zone.

Saul had wandered West London for a time and entered the graveyardto eat and rest, here amid the crammed urban dead.