Embassytown (46 page)

“How many are there?” I said. “Outcasts. In the city.”

Yl and Sib said nothing. My plans to save Embassytown were briefly part of what happened to DalTon and Shonas, and the drama of the revenge of the ex-Ambassador and their onetime vizier had happened to me. I was grateful to Shonas for my life.

“It’s on its way,” YlSib told me. “What do you call it? Spanish Dancer.”

“I know, it’s rude of me,” I said. “I’ll stop using that name.”

“Why?” “It doesn’t care and neither do we.”

The room was small. Windowless of course, illuminated by fronds that glowed.

“There’s power,” I said.

“No.” “The light’s emitted by a necrophage in the walls.”

“Come
on
,” I said. The building was dying and we were lit by that. I could only laugh.

I asked again, but YlSib wouldn’t tell me what had sent them hundreds of thousands of hours ago out of Embassytown, to live behind aeoli masks in that exile microculture. We waited. “More city-Hosts are leaving,” YlSib said. “And plenty of them are going to join the Absurd.” “There won’t be many left to guard, even if they’re prepared to.”

“They won’t have any choice. EzCal’ll order them to.”

“What’s your plan?” “What is it you want to do?”

“You know what,” I said. “Bren told you.” The truth was I didn’t know to explain it. When Spanish Dancer arrived, I said, “Look. I’ll show you.”

I remembered the way the captive Languageless had moved. The Absurd were closing in and there was no point waiting for Bren. With YlSib’s help, their careful translation, very slowly at first, we started. I, against every inclination I’d had for many years, had no choice but to take control.

I
DON
’
T THINK
urgency is a bacillus that can cross exotypes, but it was as if the Ariekei understood that something in me had changed. They and I fervently engaged. I remembered them in The Cravat, fascinated in me and all the other similes.

“You want to lie,” I said to Spanish Dancer. I spoke quickly: “Show me what you can do. How close are you? Let’s start again.” I spent hours listening to it and its group perform their little untruths, through YlSib’s translations. I made notes and strained to remember how
had done what it had done. That seemed to me the key.

I’d talked about it with Bren. Often
had wordplayed, eroding qualifying clauses until what was left was a sudden surprising lie. But that method, however well done, was a sideshow.
’s theoretical focus had been on me.

It had seen us—us similes made of Terre, not merely us similes—as key to some more fundamental and enabling not-truth. Its signature mendacity, spoken with dandy élan though only a word-trick, hinted at that shift born of contact.
Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much. Before the humans came we didn’t speak.

Through a dissembling made of omitted clauses it laid out its manifesto. Before the humans came we didn’t speak: so we will, can, must speak through them. It made that falsity a true aspiration.
, insisting on a certain might-be, changed what was. It had learnt to lie to insist on a truth.

“So,” I said to Spanish Dancer, and the companions that had joined it. “Let’s follow Surl Tesh-echer.” YlSib translated. The Ariekei reacted. “It pointed where to go. You know me. I’m the girl hurt in darkness who ate what was given to her. Tell me what I’m like, and we’ll get to what I am.”

I gave them their nicknames. Spanish Dancer, Toweller, Baptist, Duck. I’d say their names and point and even smile—you never know, you don’t know what they have or haven’t clocked. Their battery-beasts skipped about as we worked. All these Ariekei could lie, a bit. They were followers of the greatest liar in their history. I helped them leave things out, whisper clauses, with wilful misdescriptions.

Before the humans came
. I had YlSib repeat
’s claim. The Ariekei failed: the lie code-jammed their minds. “What colour?” I’d say, holding up rags or plastic. They would bud and unbud their eyes.

After hours their attention went. Duck was shuddering, Toweller was humming and emitting piping sounds. I understood. We had no datchips. The Ariekei had to go to the street to wait for the loudspeakers. Inside, we couldn’t hear the broadcast but we felt the house quiver. Yl and Sib and I looked at each other, and I think we were all imagining our students stampeding to the nearest voice-point, perhaps fighting off the mindless, perhaps beating each other in their need, as EzCal spoke.

“How come you’re behind this?” I said to YlSib. “I mean, if it works, it changes things for you . . .”

“What do we lose?” “An expertise?” “And what’s gained? By everyone?” “What’s our expertise done for us?” They looked down again. Bren had told me he’d hated his doppel, with a quiet hate. The sight of YlSib’s exhaustion, how they didn’t look at each other, made me wonder if that was the condition of all Ambassadors.

When the Ariekei returned they were calm again.
Continue
, one said. I nodded exaggeratedly and said “Yes.” I said it again, slowly. What I was trying for was a break, a rupture, a move from before to after. A tipping point that, like all such, could only be a mystery.

“W
HAT AM
I
LIKE
? What’s like me?” YlSib rendered my question and the answers.

“You’re the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her.” “The scavengers that come to our houses’ latrines to feed are like the girl eating what was given to her.”

“Charming.” I willed them to strive for poetry. Closed my eyes. They asserted similarities. I didn’t let them stop. After quite a time their suggestions grew more interesting. They overreached: the conversation was full with stillborn similes.

“The rocks are like the girl who was hurt in the dark because . . .”

“The dead are like the girl who . . .”

“Young are like the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate . . .”

Finally and suddenly, Spanish Dancer spoke. “We’re trying to change things and it’s been a long time and through our patience knowing it’ll end we’re like the girl who ate what was given to her,” YlSib translated. “Those who aren’t trying to change anything are like the girl, eating not what she wanted but what was given to her.”

I opened my mouth. The tall Ariekes leaned over me, multiple unblinking. “Oh, my God, it knows,” I said. “What I’m trying to do. Did you hear?”

“Yes.” “Yes.”

“It made me two different, contradictory things. Compared them to me.”

“Yes.” They were more cautious than me, but I smiled till they couldn’t not smile back.

W
E BROKE OFF LATE
, when the Ariekei grew so needy for the god-drug voice they couldn’t work anymore, withdrew into shaking confusion. I slept uncovered on the slightly giving floor, until Yl or Sib shook me awake and gave me some inadequate breakfast. I could tell by the translucence of the tower-skin that it was day again. My pupils were there, better: EzCal had given their morning broadcast.

YlSib told me EzCal had discovered I was gone. They were searching for me. Squads were in the city. “You aren’t just out alone anymore,” they said. “You’re on the run.” “You’re hiding.” They didn’t have to say
One of us
.

All day we worked at the inadequate similes of the Ariekei. It got me exhausted and impatient. As it grew dark I heard the moist opening of the room, and Bren came in. I took hold of him passionately, and he kissed me but held me back. I broke off when I saw what followed him. He had with him one of the Absurd.

“It’s been a bastard journey.” He laughed very shortly.

The thing was weak. Bren had it at the end of a rigid prod and shackles that coursed constantly with current. Otherwise it would easily have overcome him. The Languageless thing was wounded from that constant burning. Its giftwing was strapped to it, its legs were hobbled. I’d known this was the plan, but I couldn’t believe Bren had succeeded.

“Christ,” I said. “How did you
do
it? Oh, Jesus, look at it. This is horrible. You look like a torturer.”

“Yes it really is,” he said.

Spanish Dancer and the other Ariekei surrounded it. It strained and failed to reach for them. They tottered back, came forward, morbidly curious, it looked like.

“How is it in Embassytown?” I said.

“They’re afraid,” he said. “They probably think you and I are working for the enemy. Or they’re saying they do.”

“The Absurd?” I said. “That’s . . .”

“Absurd, yes.”