It turned its head with a whinge of metal. It took them in with eyes that were milky and melancholy, and though it was absurd to think that some self-organised viral mind moved in the flywheels behind that glass, Cutter had a moment where he felt that, in the fall of the Collective, New Crobuzon had gone so grim that even the machines were running. The construct continued, and Cutter led Judah away.
They had some miles to go still. There was sound. The militia must, Cutter thought, have been by the paused Iron Council for hours. The sound came closer. Cutter tightened his eyes shut. The time was ending, as he had known it would.
In a little stone-cluttered clearance he and Judah came to face Rahul and, on his animal back, Ann-Hari. Her teeth were bared. She held a repeater pistol.
“Judah,” she said. She dismounted. “Judah.”
Cutter patted himself until he found his gun, tried unsteadily to raise it. Rahul crossed to him with spurt-quick lizard steps and held him in his saurian arms. He leant forward at the waist and took Cutter’s weapon away. He tapped Cutter’s face with brusque kindness. He moved, dragging Cutter as if he were his parent. Cutter protested, but so weakly it was as if he said nothing. He was almost sure his gun would not have fired. That it would have been clogged, or unloaded.
Judah swayed and watched Ann-Hari. He smiled at her with his vatic calm. Ann-Hari trembled. Cutter tried to say something, to stop this, but no one paid notice.
“Why?” Ann-Hari said, and came forward. She stood close to Judah Low. She was teary.
“They’d be dead,” said Judah.
“You don’t know. You don’t know. ”
“Yes. You saw. You saw. You know what would have happened.”
“You don’t know, Judah, gods damn you…”
Cutter had never seen Ann-Hari so raging, so uncontrolled. He wanted to speak but he could not because this was not his instant.
Judah looked at Ann-Hari and hid any fear, looked at her with an utterness of attention that snagged Cutter’s insides. Don’t end now, like this. Rahul’s arms around him were protective.
“Ann-Hari,” Judah said, his voice gentle though he must know. “Would you have had them die? Would you have died? I tried to turn you, we tried to…” You knew they wouldn’t, thought Cutter. “They’re safe now. They’re safe now. The Iron Council remains.”
“You’ve pickled us, you bastard…”
“You’d all have died…”
“End it.”
“I don’t know how. I wouldn’t, besides-you know that.”
“ End it.”
“No. You’d all have died.”
“You’ve no fucking right, Judah…”
“You’d have died.”
“Maybe.” She spit the word. A long quiet followed. “Maybe we’d have died. But you don’t know. You don’t know there weren’t Collectivists waiting behind them militia ready to take them, now all scared off because of what you done. You don’t know that they weren’t there, you don’t know who wouldn’t have been inspired when we come, too late or not. See? Too late or not, they might have been. See, Judah? You see? Whether we died or not.”
“I had… it’s the Council. I had to make them, you, safe…”
“It’s not yours to choose, Judah. Not yours.”
He moved his arms slightly out from his sides, stood square to her, looked down at her. The connection between them remained, a line of force. They seemed to draw in energy from the surrounds. Judah stared at her with patience, a readiness.
“It was not yours, Judah Low. You never understood that. You never knew.” She raised her pistol and Cutter made a sound and moved in Rahul’s grip. She pressed it against Judah’s chest. He did not flinch. “The thing in you… You did not create the Iron Council, Judah Low. It was never yours.” She stepped back and raised the pistol till he stared into its mouth. “And maybe you’ll die not understanding, Judah. Judah Low. Iron Council was never yours. You don’t get to choose. You don’t decide when is the right time, when it fits your story. This was the time we were here. We knew. We decided. And you don’t know, and now we don’t either, we’ll never know what would have happened. You stole all those people from themselves.”
“I did it,” Judah whispered, “for you, for the Iron Council. To save it.”
“That I know,” she said. She spoke quietly, but her voice still shook. “But we were never yours, Judah. We were something real, and we came in our time, and we made our decision, and it was not yours. Whether we were right or wrong, it was our history. You were never our augur Judah. Never our saviour.
“And you won’t hear this, you can’t, but this now isn’t because you’re a sacrifice to anything. This isn’t how it needed to be. This is because you had no right.”
Cutter heard the end in her voice and saw Ann-Hari’s hand move. Now, he thought. Now Judah, stop her.
In the tiny splintered instant that she tightened her hand he thought: Now.
Call an earth golem. Judah could focus and drag from the hard earth before him a grey earth golem that would rise, levering itself out of the stuff of its own substance with weeds and weed-debris hanging still to it, the hillside itself become moving, and it could intervene. It could stand between Judah and Ann-Hari and take her bullet, stop it with the density of its matter, then reach and cuff the gun away and grip her close so that she could not fight and Judah would be safe from her, and could have the golem walk her away or keep her motionless while he turned with Cutter and they went on around the roots where trees had been torn up and past the powdering rocks to New Crobuzon.
An air golem. One hard gust of ab-live wind to close Ann-Hari’s eyes and make her aim falter. An obedient figure made of air to stand before the Iron Councillor and throw her clothes into her face, to channel very hard and fast into the barrels of her pistol, to ruin any shots. And as the air around displaced by the dance of the new presence made whorls of dust rise and the gusting of dry leaf-matter where it still scabbed bushes, Judah and Cutter could leave.
Make her gun a golem. Turn the very pistol itself into a small and quick golem and have it close its mouth, have it eat the bullet before it spat it away, and then Judah might have the thing twist in Ann-Hari’s hand and turn with what limited motion its shape allowed it, and point up into her face, a threat, and give Judah the time, while Ann-Hari was paralysed with that surprise and the menace of her own weapon, give him the time to get away, with Cutter, over the rise and the pathway.
Make the bullet a golem. And it could fall. Make her clothes golems. They might trip her. Make a golem of those scattered little dead trees. Make a golem of clouds. Of the shadows, of her own shadow. Make another sound golem. Make a golem of sound and time to keep her unmoving. It was very cold. Sing your rhythms again fast to make a golem of still time and stop her up and we’ll go.
But Judah did nothing and Ann-Hari pulled her trigger.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was by the Tar that Cutter regained the city. A night entry. Slowly and under new laws, the New Crobuzon authorities were reopening riverine trade. The barge-rangers were waiting to establish new runs. Cutter came back into New Crobuzon disguised in a coal-smeared overall, piloting a fat low-slung boat.