China Miéville

by Embassytown

  At first it was the cleaved Turn who volunteered, shaved their heads and had sockets implanted, tried out boosters like clawed tiaras, hooked into links and let gun-prodded Ez, Rukowsi, read them, and speak with them. Lott was the first to take on the role while her doppel, Char, was still alive.

  Some are afraid to, but many Ambassadors have powered down their own links. They don’t equalise. They don’t speak Language much anymore. There’s not much call. I don’t think they all dislike each other. Bren says he disagrees, but I tell him he can’t think beyond his own history, which is understandable.

  We keep Joel Rukowsi safe because we need him and his freakish empathic head, but even that I think will change. We’ll find others like him. In the meantime we work him hard, and stockpile hours of drugtalk. We can afford to be generous to the exodusers.

  It’s two cities now—one of the addicts, one of all the others—that intersect politely. The Absurd and the New have much more in common than either do with the oratees. Hearing’s nothing: the Absurd and the New think the same.

  Spanish exchanges politenesses with Ariekei at every corner, with the Terre, with the fanwingless too, by the touchpads they carry, our Terretech contribution. I’m learning to read and write their evolving scrawl, like a young Ariekes. As soon as they awake into their third instar, now, like some rough ritual they’re hard-trained out of their instincts. They have only a few liminal days of pure Language, when word is referent and lies are uncanny, between animal instar and consciousness. Afterward, the young New Ariekei know their city wasn’t always this way but can’t imagine it other.

  Of those that can’t unlearn Language, some are deafening themselves, knowing it’ll cure them, that it’s not the cutting-out of speech and mind they might once have thought. Others, like Rooftop, are preparing to leave. We’ll never visit their autarchic communities. They won’t be linked by pipework to the city. We’ll hand over many many datchips, enough to last a long time. The exiles will live out their addiction and raise a new brood, never let them hear the chips, until their children speak Language too, but unafflicted and free. Humans—vectors of addiction—will be banned and taboo: the city, where they speak differently now, they’ll explain, will be taboo. For the next little future, it’s not humans but the New Ariekei that’ll ambassador between the city and the settlements.

  I know how it’ll go, though. A New Ariekes will come to trade: they’ll speak to it, Language to language, and they’ll think they do, but they won’t understand each other. Some of the young’ll be intrigued by this odd stranger, and a few adventurous Language-speaking young will make their way to the city gates. That’ll be the story. Doubtless there’ll still be addicts here—outcasts, holy fools or whatever their status then—and the newcomers will hear the drugtalks broadcast for them, and instantly be addicted too.

  The ship’s crew will have weapons, of course: Bremen weapons, more advanced than ours. But we’re very many and they’ll be few. Besides, we mean them no harm. We’ll have an honour guard.

  “Welcome, Captain,” I’ll say as the doors open onto Ariekene soil. “Please come with us.” They’ll be guests as much as prisoners.

  That’s tendentious. They’ll be prisoners, but we’ll treat them well.

  According to Wyatt’s instructions, our next relief is due to deliver to Embassytown several new Ambassadors of EzRa’s kind. They’ve improved their empathic techniques. EzRa was the test: next was supposed to come Bremen’s coup.

  Too late. We got our coup in first. Instead, the new Ambassadors will have a job pushing product to addicts.

  “,” Spanish Dancer will say. It’ll gesture politely with its giftwing to the armed Embassytowners waiting. “.”

  The New Ariekei were astounded to learn that Terre have more than one language. I uploaded French. “I, je. I am, je suis,” I said. Spanish Dancer was delighted. It said to me, “.”

  That’s not its only innovation. They don’t speak Anglo-Ubiq here, but Anglo-Ariekei. I’m a student of this new language. It has its nuances. When I asked Spanish if it regretted learning to lie, it paused and said, “.” A performance perhaps, but I envy that precision.

  I wonder if Spanish Dancer ever mourns itself. If it lets me read what it’s writing, which I’m almost certain is the story of the war, I might find out.

  It did tell me another story. When Baptist and Toweller returned to Embassytown, pretending to be oratees, to persuade EzCal into the wilderness where we were waiting, the god-drug wouldn’t see them. EzCal told them instead to relay their message through one of their regular Ariekene entourage, which saw and recognised them as followers of the controversial .

  It knew something was wrong: it could have given them up. Baptist and Toweller, in an instant and bravura moment of decision, admitted to their contact the true situation: that new, better times were coming, for all of them, if EzCal could be enticed out.

  Knowing that like their prophet they might be liars, it still decided to believe them. Given hope for the first time in a long time, that functionary went and told EzCal exactly what Baptist and Toweller had been about to. But they were New and it wasn’t. It knew the truth, and it had never lied before. It had had to dissemble, in Language, managing with Herculean effort and luck to get out words that sounded like grunts to itself. That was the real hero of the war, Spanish Dancer told me, that nameless Ariekes, telling the only lie of its life.

  It wouldn’t be that hard for Bremen to destroy us. But I think we can make it worth their while not to. War across immer isn’t cheap. We have to make sure we’re useful. We know what our use can be. Look at us here, on the dark edge of the immer!

  There will be the port they wanted. Within a local decade. We’ll be the last outpost. That was always our intended role, only now we know it, and while it won’t be quite what our metropole had in mind, we can run ourselves.

  Welcome to Embassytown, the frontier. I know how fast the stories’ll come. I’m an immerser: I’ve heard them. Just beyond our planet’s shores will be, people will say, El Dorado immer lands; deserted ships long lost; Earth; God. Alright then.

  I know what chancers’ll come, what pirates. I know the likelihood that Embassytown will become slum: but we’ll moulder and die or be eradicated by Bremen shivabomb if we have no use. Scile in his visionary stupidity, trying to save the Ariekei, would have damned them: if they killed us, when the relief came it wouldn’t forbear genociding them in return. I remember Scile’s not from a colony when he fails to think of such things.

  So we’re to be ravaged by speculation and thrill-seekers. We’ll be the wilds. I’ve been to deadwood planets and pioneer towns: even those way stations have their good things. We’ll open up the sky. We’ll have knowledge to sell. Uniquely detailed maps. Immer byways only locals like us can find. We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.

  We’ll soon have one immership in our little navy, and at least one captain. When the next Bremen delegation comes to see what to make of us, we’ll have something to offer.

  Immersion’s never safe. This far out, at this edge, we’re back to the dangerous glory days of homo diaspora. I don’t have any hesitation. I’ve gone out, I’ve come back, and it’s time to go again, in directions and for distances no immerser has gone. In kilohours, I might be meeting an exot I’m the first Terre ever to see, working tongueware, trying to make a greeting. I might find anything.

  I’ve been studying navigation and immerology, techniques that I, the floaker, had always avoided. “You’ve never floaked in your life,” Bren told me, brusquely, when I said that to him. I’ve started to dream of how Embassytown will look, from the ship. That’s why I’m at Lilypad Hill every day. Because I can’t wait.

  “Good morning, Captain. You’ll come with us.” And I and my crew will take the skiff to orbit, to the ship.

  “Ready,” I’ll say, and set the helm beyond void cognita. I’ll push the levers that set us out. O
r perhaps the gracious thing will be to allow my first lieutenant to do it. We don’t know how the passage will affect such crew: I’ve warned them that. They’re still insistent.

  So perhaps it’ll be Lieutenant Spanish Dancer who’ll instigate that indescribable motion from everyday space through the always. We’ll immerse, into the immer, and into the out.

  It would be foolish to pretend we know what’ll happen. We’ll have to see how Embassytown gets shaped.

  By Embassytown I mean the city. Even the New Ariekei have started to call the city by that name. they say, or , or .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHINA MIÉVILLE is the author of several books, including Perdido Street Station, The City & The City, and Kraken. His works have won the Hugo, the British Science Fiction Award (twice), the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times), and the World Fantasy Award. He lives and works in London.