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‘Tell me about the rituals,’ the man said.

‘Rituals?’ Catcher tried to relax, then realized that he’d never relaxed in his life and didn’t know how. ‘There are no rituals. Only scientific procedures.’

The man scoffed. ‘Whatever you want to call them. How do you tear holes in the rational universe?’

Catcher suppressed the urge to throttle him. ‘You are being absurd. I merely reduce physical matter to its simplest form, allowing me to reconstruct the material cosmos according to the patterns of the Wa... of the new order.’

The captive sighed. ‘Oh, very well. How do you do it?’

‘Intonation.’

‘You mean, you chant?’

‘Chant! Monks and women chant.’ The man frowned at his turn of phrase, but Catcher ignored him. ‘The rational order of the universe responds to the harmonics of the intonations –’

‘Which are?’

Catcher, determined to win this battle of wills, looked the diabolist straight in the eye and said:

‘ Io Ordo Ordo Io. ’

For a second, a tiny corner of reality by the prisoner’s left ear twitched expectantly.

‘Ah. I see.’ The man was nodding. ‘Chanting in binary. The numbers disguised as simple "magic words". A shut-down code for reality. Quantum mnemonics, but without the lethal finesse. Typically human. Everything reduced to the basics.’

Catcher’s mouth clicked open, ready to protest at the word

‘magic’. The man interrupted him:

‘But the codes are too complex for you to have just stumbled across them. I was right, then. Outside assistance.

Who are you working for?’

The big hand of the Great Clock of Time was ticking towards midnight. At least, that was how it felt to Catcher.

‘The Watchmakers,’ he said, sure that the agent of Cacophony would understand, and be afraid.

Instead, the man just pulled a stupid face.

‘The Watchmakers!’ screamed Catcher.

‘You’ve been touched,’ said the diabolist.

‘Yes! Yes!’ At last, he was understanding. ‘Touched by the glory of the Watchmakers. The Great Architects of the universe. The majestic clockwork –’

‘No.’ The man shook his head. ‘Touched by something very powerful and extremely irrational. And I’ve never got on well with Great Architects anyway. Look at yourself, Mr Catcher.’

Catcher found himself looking down. Everything seemed perfectly normal. His clothes were in place. His cravat was tied under his chin in a neat and orderly fashion. His body was trembling slightly, but that was all.

‘You’re becoming a walking anomaly,’ the prisoner told him. ‘Can’t you see it? Your entire biological structure has been affected. It’s nothing you could put your finger on, of course. Put your DNA under analysis and it would probably make no sense at all, but to the naked eye, everything seems to be in the right place. Don’t you understand?’

Catcher realized that he was staring at his hands.

Something crawled across his skin. A clockwork voice in his head told him to close his eyes.

‘At least there’s one good thing about us meeting like this,’

the man said with appalling cheeriness. ‘You must be the one who has my amaranth. Please can I have my ball back?’

‘So, why are you here? In America, I mean.’

They were still in the ruined cloisters, trying to ignore the cracks and the clockwork fingertips. They walked past an overturned glass-fronted cabinet which, according to a small bronze plaque set into its base, contained the only stuffed specimen of a De Loys ape in existence. The animal inside was probably the ugliest thing that had ever lived.

‘Curiosity,’ Duquesne said, wondering how convincing she sounded. ‘I have heard that the architects of this nation have an interest in, ahh, unusual practices.’

‘Architects?’ Cwej blinked at her, blond eyebrows crumpling appealingly. ‘Sorry, I don’t know much about this time period.’

Duquesne wished he’d stop saying things like that, even if they were true. ‘Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Paine. Even George Washington. It’s rumoured that they may have practised some form of... how may I put it?’

‘Er, witchcraft?’ suggested Cwej.

Duquesne sighed. ‘If you wish. It is said they practised such things during their revolution.’ The