China Miéville

by Embassytown

  I was staring into something opened up. Fractures, renegades, guerrilla Ambassadors, unquiet cleaved. What the hell else was out there? Who? Scile? Shiftfather Christmas? Back came stupid tales, now not so stupid. I remembered unanswered questions, I wondered who’d gone from Embassytown, who’d turned their backs on it, over years, and I wondered why.

  “Embassytown’s dying,” Yl said. She gestured at the window, and Sib at the soundless wallscreen. The worst, most Language-starved Ariekei were coming. They shambled in unnatural bursts like toys. Troops of the collapsing, falling apart variously, claiming our streets without intent, with only oratees’ despair, but killing as they came, us and each other. We could no longer walk the outermost of our streets: there were too many attacks, too much Ariekene rage.

  Cams showed those in their dotage instar wandering with pendulous food-bellies, some stumbling by their random ways into Embassytown. No Ariekei tended them. It was shocking. There were rumours that in periods between EzRa-word highs some Ariekei were eating these unstruggling elders, as evolution intended but their culture had abjured.

  Even as things fell apart I was desperate to ask YlSib where they’d been, what had happened, what they’d done since they absconded, years ago. They’d lived so close, maybe in some biorigged dwelling that sweated air at them inside. Did they consult? Had they worked for the Ariekei? Were they independent? Trading in information, go-betweens in informal economies of which I’d never known a thing? There was no way, I thought, such a hinterland could have been sustained without the patronage of some in Embassytown.

  “You said they weren’t helping us,” I said. “Those mad Ariekei that came and attacked the others.”

  Bren said, “They weren’t.”

  YlSib said, “Factions are emerging.” “Some Ariekei can’t even think anymore.” “They’re dying.” “Those are the ones tearing up the outskirts.” “Then there are some trying to keep some kind of order. Live in new ways.” “Manage their addiction.” “They’re trying all kinds of methods. Desperate stuff.” “Repeating phrases they’ve heard EzRa say, to see if they can give each other fixes.” “Trying to take control of neighbourhoods.” “Trying to ration out the broadcasts.” “Organise different listening shifts for different groups, to keep things more …” “… organised.” “And then there are dissidents who want to change everything.”

  “We have sects,” Bren said. “So do they, now. Not ones that worship a god, though. Ones that hate it.”

  “They know the world’s ending,” said YlSib. “And some of them want to bring in a new one.” “They despise the other Ariekei.” “That’s what you saw.” “Their word for the addicts was …” They said a word together, in Language. “They used to call them that,” Sib or Yl said, “although they can’t anymore.” “It means ‘weak.’ ” “ ‘Sick.’ ” “It means ‘languid.’ ” “Lotus-eaters.” “They’re going to start a new order.”

  “How …?” I remembered the stubbed and ruined fanwings. They can’t call them that anymore, because they can’t hear, or speak, they’ve no Language. “Oh, I …” I said. “Oh, God. They did it to themselves.”

  “To escape temptation,” Bren said. “It’s a vicious cure but it’s a cure. Without hearing, their bodies stop needing the drug. And now, the only thing they hate worse than their afflicted brethren is the affliction.”

  “Or, to put it another way, us,” said YlSib.

  “If they’d seen you …” “… they’d have killed you faster than they did their own.”

  “There’s not many of them,” Bren said. “Yet. But without EzRa to speak, without the drug, they’re the only Ariekei with a plan.”

  “The only Ariekei,” Sib said. “We’ve got one too, though.” “We have,” said Yl, “a plan.”

  15

  In the out, I’d learnt that our Embassy isn’t a huge building. In countries on many planets I’d seen much larger: taller, aided by gravity-cranes; more sprawling. But it was large enough. I was only slightly surprised to discover that there were whole corridors, whole floors that by convoluted design I’d not only never been into but had never even suspected were there.

  “You know what to do,” YlSib had said to us. “You need a replacement.” “Open the damn infirmary.”

  That was the basis of their idea, the plan that Bren relayed to MagDa’s committee, as if it were his own. I wasn’t clear on why he’d introduced me to YlSib, but he was right to trust me. Close to the top of the Embassy, in a set of infolding rooms and halls, was the separated-off zone. I followed those who knew the way.

  The Ambassadors and Staff of the committee looked horrified at Bren’s suggestion. He insisted, with references incomprehensible to those of the committee ignorant of the infirmary he mentioned. I pretended to be one of them.

  “There could be others in there we can use,” Bren said.

  “And how are we supposed to know?” said Da.

  “Well, that’s a difficulty,” he’d said. “We’re going to have to have a test subject.”

  Only streets away, the anarchy of desperate Ariekei grew worse, and more of our houses fell. Embassytowners still foolishly near the city would turn corners into those ravenous things, who rushed at them and in Language begged them to speak, to sound like EzRa sounded. When they didn’t, the Ariekei took hold of them and opened them up. Perhaps in rage, perhaps in some hope that the wanted sound would emerge from the holes they made.

  I couldn’t believe what we were planning. We’d gone by foot into the city, in a snatch squad. Smoke and birds circled above us. Micropolitics were everything in Embassytown by then, groups of men and women enforcing their wills in territories of two or three streets, armed with wrenches, or pistols or pistol-beasts crudely rigged, that they shouldn’t have had to use, that clenched them too tight, drew blood from the weapon hand.

  “Where’s EzRa then, you fuckers?” they shouted when they saw us. “Going to fix everything, are you?” Some of those posses shouted that they would attack the Hosts. If they did they might take down one or two of the weakest, but against those aggressive self-mutilated they’d have no chance.

  Into the ring of Embassytown we had lost, where the Ariekei had been followed by pet weeds. They were already shaggy or crustlike over what had recently been our architecture. The air here was tainted by theirs.

  We kept our weapons up. Ariekei saw us, and now it was they who shouted, came forward, ran away. EzRa, EzRa, the voice, where is the voice?

  “Don’t kill unless you really have to,” said Da. We found a lone Ariekes, turning, pining for words.

  Come with us, MagDa said.

  EzRa, the Ariekes said.

  Come with us, MagDa said, and you will hear EzRa.

  We buzzed a corvid. It was antique, metal and silicon and polymers: entirely Terretech. We were chary of using our more sophisticated machines now: they were built with a compromise of our traditions and local biorigging, and as addiction spread, they might be tainted. For all we knew they might gush that need if we flew them, in their exhaust, perhaps in the tone of their drone.

  The Ariekes who came with us was called . It was confused and overcome by need for the god-drug’s voice. It was physically starving, too, though it didn’t seem to know it. We gave it food. It followed us because we made promises about EzRa. We took it with us to that infirmary. I wasn’t the only ex-commoner on the committee who hadn’t known the wing existed. By a series of counterintuitive corridor turns and staircases we arrived at a heavy door. There was even a guard. Security, in this time when all officers were needed.

  “Got your message, Ambassador,” he said to MagDa. “I’m still not sure I can … I …” He looked at us. He saw the cowed Ariekes with us.

  “We’re in martial times, Officer,” MagDa said. “You don’t really think …” “… that the old laws apply.” “Let us in.”

  Inside, uniformed staff met us and made us welcome. Their anxiety was palpable but muted compared to everyone else’s. There w
as a pretend normality in those secret halls: it was the only place I’d been for weeks where rhythms didn’t seem utterly sideswiped by the crisis.

  Carers went with drugs and charts in and out of rooms. I got the sense that this crew would continue with these day-to-day activities until word-starved Ariekei broke through their doors and killed them. I suppose there were other institutions in Embassytown where the dynamic of the quotidian sustained—some hospitals, perhaps some schools, perhaps houses where shiftparents most deeply loved the children. Whenever any society dies there must be heroes whose fightback is to not change.

  The infirmary was infirmary and asylum and jail for failed Ambassadors. “As if it would work every time you tried to make two people into one,” Bren whispered to me, in scorn.

  Ambassadors were bred in waves: we passed rooms of men and women all the same generation. First through the corridor of the middle-aged, incarcerated failures more than half a megahour old, staring at the cams and at the one-way glass that kept us invisible. I saw doppels in separated chambers, unlinked I suppose or linked loosely enough that the wall between them caused no discomfort. Looking into room after room I saw faces twice, twice, twice.

  Some cells were empty and windowless and spare, some opulent with fabrics, looking out over Embassytown and the city. There were inmates secured or limited by electronic tags, even straps. Mostly the infirm, as one of the doctors who guided us called them, said nothing, but one of those buckled in constraints screamed inventive filth at us. How she knew we were passing beyond the opaque glass I don’t know. We saw her mouth move, and the doctor pressed a button that for a few seconds let us hear her. I disliked him for it a great deal.

  Everything was clean. There were flowers. Wherever possible over double-rooms was the printed name of those inside, with honorific: Ambassador HerOt, Ambassador JusTin, Ambassador DagNey.

  Some had simply never had the empathy they’d needed, to pretend to share a mind, had only ever been two people who looked the same, despite training, drugs, the link and coercions. Many were insane to different degrees. Even if they had facility with Language, they’d been left unstable, resentful, melancholic. Dangerous. There were those who’d been made mad through cleavage. Who hadn’t, as Bren had, been able to survive the death of a doppel. They were broken half-people.

  There was a huge variety of the failed. Many more than there were Ambassadors. I was horrified at these numbers. I never knew, I told myself. We were too civilised to end them: hence this polite prison where we waited for them to die. I knew enough Terre history to assume that some of these failed must be counted so because of political refusals. I was reading every nameplate we passed, and I realised it was for names I recognised, like DalTon—those of dissidents of whom only bad citizens like me spoke. No sign.

  Past an extreme section, men and women older than my shiftparents baying like animals and those talking with careful civility on coms to their carers, or to no one. “Christ,” I said, “Christ Pharotekton.”

  In its withdrawal, unthinkingly defecated. It realised what it had done and said something in shame: the action was as taboo for the Hosts as for us.

  I think the doctors deliberately took us a long way to our destination, a room where we could hold our auditions. So we were voyeurs on chamber after chamber. We passed walls painted in brighter colours, where screens were uploaded with playware, and God help me the aesthetics were so incongruous that it took me seconds to understand. This was where they brought Ambassador-young, some just 50 kilohours old. I didn’t look through the windows in those doors, and I’m glad I didn’t see the unfixable children.

  In a large room, we asked to pay attention. One by one the doctors brought in what they thought the most likely candidates, all of them under guard.

  Those who’d never mastered Language were no good to us, nor those too unstable. But some pairs held almost all their lives had been incarcerated for nothing but that there was something lacking when they spoke Language, a component we couldn’t detect. Many of them retained a startling degree of sanity. Those were the people we tried.

  An aging duo stood before us, men without any easy Ambassador arrogance. Instead they seemed inadequate to the courtesy we gave them. They were named XerXes. The Ariekes entranced them: they’d seen no Hosts for years. “They could once speak Language,” a doctor told us, “then suddenly they stopped being able to. We don’t know why.”

  XerXes had a polite and uninquisitive affect. “Do you remember Language, Ambassador XerXes?” Da said.

  “What a question!” “What a question!” XerXes said. “We’re an Ambassador.” “We’re an Ambassador.”

  “Would you greet our guest for us?”

  They looked out of the window. Sectors of the city were listless and discoloured in withdrawal, overrun by wens.

  “Greet them?” said XerXes. “Greet them?”

  They muttered together. They prepared, lengthily, whispering, nodding. We got impatient. They spoke. Classic words, that even I knew well.

  “,” they said. It’s pleasing to greet you and have you here.

  The Ariekes snapped its eye-coral up. I thought, because I wanted to, that it was like the motion Ariekei made when they heard EzRa speak. peered slowly around the room.

  It was just looking because there had been a new noise in the room. It might have reacted the same had I dropped a glass. It lost interest. XerXes spoke again, something like, Would you speak now to me? The Ariekes ignored them and XerXes spoke again and their voice fell apart, degraded, the Cut and Turn each saying half of a different entreaty. It wasn’t pleasant.

  I don’t quite believe there was no Language in it. I think there was something, a remnant, in what the Ariekes heard. I’ve thought back to what I saw, to the way it moved, and I don’t believe in fact it was exactly as it would have been to random noise. It made no difference, wasn’t enough, but there was, I think, in XerXes and I don’t know how many others, the ghost of Language.

  Ambassador XerXes were taken back to their rooms. They went tamely. One looked at us with I swear apology as he shuffled to his imprisonment.

  Others: older first; younger; then, appallingly, two sets of adolescents desperate to please us. Some were equalised and dressed the same; some were not. A pair about my age, FeyRis, attempted cold defiance, but still tried desperately to speak Language when we asked them to. stared at them and recognised something, but not enough. FeyRis were the first of our candidates to curse us as they were taken—dragged—away.

  I stared at MagDa. I liked them, I admired them. They’d known about this.

  We met seventeen Ambassadors. Twelve sounded to me as if they were speaking Language. Nine seemed to have some kind of an effect on the Ariekes. Three times I wondered if we had found what YlSib had hoped we might, what we were looking for, to take EzRa’s place and keep Embassytown alive. But whatever they had wasn’t enough.

  If EzRa’s Language was a drug, I thought, perhaps some other Ambassador’s, one day, would be a poison. We played one of the last datchips. It slumped and shuddered at EzRa’s meanderings about the biggest tree Ez had ever climbed. There was nothing in the infirmary that could help us.

  “You can’t replicate that,” a doctor said. “These …” She indicated the imprisoned mistakes beyond our room. “They have imperfections. That’s not what there was in EzRa. Two random people should not be able to speak Language. You won’t find anything like that. It wasn’t just unlikely that we’d find EzRa the first time: it was impossible. How do you propose to find it again?”

  No wonder EzRa couldn’t survive. The universe had had to correct itself. We sat in committee. “We have to close this place,” I said.

  “Not now, Avice,” MagDa said.

  “It’s monstrous.”

  “Not now, Christ!” “There’s not going to be anything to close …” “… or any of us to close it, if we don’t bloody think.”

  So, silence. Once every minute or so, someone around the table wo
uld look as if he or she was about to say something, but none of us had anything. Someone was sniffing as if they might cry.

  MagDa whispered to each other. “Get what researchers you can in here,” they said at last. “Riggers, bios, medics, linguists …” “Anyone you can think of.” “This Ariekes.” “.” They looked at each other. “Do what you have to.” “Test it.” “Take it apart.”

  They waited for dissent. There was none.

  “Take it apart and see if you can find out what’s happening.” “Inside. In its bone-house.” They glanced at Bren and me. “When it hears EzRa.” “See if you can find out anything.” “Maybe we can synth it that way.”

  Like that, by that leadership, we would murder a Host. Not even in self-defence but calculation. Embassytown became something new. I was in awe of Mag and Da for their bravery. It was a dreadful act. MagDa had known it had to come from them.

  I don’t think any of us thought we’d discover in the Ariekes’s innards any secrets to its addiction, but we’d try. And, too, we were all going to die soon, and it was time for new paradigms, and MagDa gave us one. They took it on themselves to tell us what it meant to be at war. They gave us a dirty hope. It was one of the most selfless things I’ve ever seen.

  16

  The vivisection on the addict in the infirmary told us nothing.

  Within days Embassytown knew that the committee had tried to stave off what was coming, to create a new EzRa, and had failed. Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.

  Mag and Da had us go to war. Too late, those of us not despairing put up barricades. We’d surrendered the edges of Embassytown. Now some streets in, we hauled out the contents of deserted houses, broke them up and threw them across our streets. Earthmovers cut trenches and piled up the ruins of our roads and the Ariekene earth below them into sloped revetments. We hardened them with plastone and concrete, stationed shooters to protect the remains of our town in the city, from Ariekei in need.