Embassytown

by China Miéville

  The Absurd army didn’t slow at all. I felt sick. “Courage,” Bren said, in French. I did not smile. The inchoate motion language the fanwingless spoke was camouflaged by shared purpose. From their untidy ranks came a shot.

  “Jesus,” I said. Spanish Dancer, , spoke with its voice and hands as its once-fellows approached to murder or brutalise it. I wondered what would happen to it if it were deafened now, now that language was different for it. Spanish’s and the Absurd’s motions registered to the enemy as little as windblown plants.

  They’re not ignoring, I thought. They don’t know. They didn’t know that these minds weren’t like the others they’d finished or changed, how could they? I dug among our packs.

  “Show your fanwings!” I shouted to Spanish. “Show them you can hear!” YlSib began to translate, but Spanish was already unfurling, and the others were copying it, except for Dub and Rooftop, who did so only when Spanish told them to in Language. Another missile came close. “Tell Dub and Rooftop to get in front,” I said.

  I made a datchip play, and the thin voice of EzCal exhorted us to something or other. But every one of the Ariekei had already heard that speech so did not react to it, and I cursed and threw it away.

  “Oh,” said Bren. He understood. I fumbled again while the Absurd came close enough that I could hear their murder-croons. I spilled a handful of chips and finally got another to sound. EzCal said, We are going to tell you what it is that you must do . . .

  We Terre heard it as sound. Spanish Dancer and the others heard it too, now, as sound: they just cocked their fanwings quizzically. But Dub and Rooftop were still addicts. They snapped upright, shuddered so elementally it was as if gravity took them toward the source of the voice. They glazed.

  “Yes,” said Bren.

  I played another. Dub and Rooftop were swaying, recovering from EzCal’s first words; jerked giddily they were caught up again. Rooftop shouted at what was, I realised, EzCal’s descriptions of trees.

  Our self-defeaned Ariekes kept waving at the others, and Spanish and the others mimicked it, their own fanwings opening and closing, and in the middle of them all Dub and Rooftop lost themselves. I kept the sound going. “,” said Spanish, and I could think how horrible the sight of that powerless staggering must be to it, reminding it what it had been, making it watch its friends suffering in compulsion, but I wouldn’t cease.

  As the first of the Absurd crested our rise and came towards us, weapons up, first one, then more, then many, hesitated. I pressed another chip and heard Bren say yes.

  Every army has one soldier at its very front. A big Ariekes, its Cut- and Turn-mouths open as if it were howling, picking its feet high as it came for us. I was holding out a datchip as if it might stop it. Its eyes spread in all directions, one for each of us, watching Spanish, and the Ariekes that had been our captive jerking its arms as the Absurd did to each other, and Dub and Rooftop stumbling. If I was thinking anything I was praying. It was very close.

  Abruptly the soldier stopped. It lowered its sputtering mace. It involuted its eyes, opened them again and watched us. I was still playing EzCal’s voice. It wasn’t the only motionless one, now. As if I were merciless, I made Dub and Rooftop dance their addiction. The Absurd gripped each other, gestured or stood still, watching.

  “Don’t stop,” said Bren.

  “,” said Spanish, and Bren said again, “Don’t.”

  “What . . . ?” said Sib.

  “What is it?” said Yl.

  The army of hopeless and enraged had been driven to murder by their memories of addiction, and the sight of their compatriots made craven to the words of an interloper species. That degradation was the horizon of their despair. I’d made them see the motions of their ex-selves hearing their god-drug— there was no mistaking that tarantella—but that other Ariekei had fanwings unfurled, could hear, but were unaffected.

  There wasn’t supposed to be such a thing as uncertainty in the minds of the Absurd. Its sudden arrival arrested them. Our ex-captive waved its giftwing and its stump. Stop, it was saying, and many in the army that faced us knew that it was saying so, and were stunned to know that they knew it.

  Poor Rooftop, I thought, poor Dub. Ariekene dust coiled around me and I blinked. Thank God they never learnt to lie. We’d needed real addicts, to prove that the others were free, and the rage of the Absurd therefore misdirected. I kept Dub and Rooftop moving. I made them sick on god-drug. Spanish Dancer watched them, fanned its fanwing. I was shouting.

  INFORMATION MOVED desperately slowly among the Absurd— even their quickest thinkers still had only a tenuous understanding that they could transmit information. What they said to each other at first with their waving and upheld limbs was simple: Don’t attack. Following that: Something is happening.

  The information was discombobulated with distance, moving backwards through the rank. At the front, gestures got close to: They can hear but are not addicted. Farther back, ranks of the Absurd told those behind them simply: Stop.

  “,” said Spanish. Our Deaf went to the front of the army, and Spanish went with it. With the Absurd generals watching, the two of them—ostentatiously, in wing signs and sigils scraped in the earth, ideograms that startled me—started to talk.

  THERE WERE MANY many hours, two days and nights of frustration and silences, while the army waited. Hesitated. Individuals kept coming up from the ranks to see what was happening. Every one that did was astonished: unaddicted Ariekei; Terre waiting respectfully; the process of slow dawning between hearing and Absurd, as we still questionably called them; scrawls in dirt.

  Those with a little knowledge became agents of patience among the others. We could see their influence, by whatever gestural persuasions, when, toward the end of the second day, human refugees approached from the army’s flank, easily killable, but the fanwingless didn’t assault them.

  The Terre must have realised that the Absurd had stopped, wondered at the strange calm and come to find its source, and the Languageless had let them. The refugees set up camp a way away from us, and watched.

  It took a time before the boundary of comprehension between Absurd and ’s group, the New Hearing, was more fully breached, but nothing like so long as I’d once have expected. We weren’t teaching the deafened to communicate: we were showing them they already could, and did. It wasn’t incremental but revelatory; and revelations, though hard-won, are viral.

  “We need EzCal here,” I said.

  “They won’t come if they know what’s happened,” Bren said. “If they know that they’ve lost.”

  Even if it means the end of the war? But I knew he was right. “Well then we can’t tell them the truth. We see any vespcams we smash them. They can’t know what’s happened.”

  TOWELLER AND BAPTIST understood the mission we gave them. They wouldn’t have done a few days before. They returned to the city in a flyer with the Absurd.

  “They know what they have to do?” I said to Spanish Dancer.

  “.” They’d sneak back in the wounded ship, take on the roles of loyal addict-soldiers, bringing news of a breakthrough. They’d tell EzCal that the Absurd had stopped, were just waiting, and that the god-drug and their entourage must come. It couldn’t occur to EzCal that they were being lied to. That was what we were relying on. How could it? They would, after all, hear it from Ariekei, in what they would think was Language. Say it like a Host.

  “They know what to do when EzCal speaks to them?”

  “.” They knew to seem as if it swept them over.

  “They know to ask for them to speak, if too long goes by without?”

  “.” They knew to mimic the addiction. They knew what they had to do.

  The two different tribes of post-Language Ariekei shared symbols. The human refugees made no attempt to come closer. “Did we do it?” I said.

  Surrounded by semiosis, Dub at last juddered and abruptly achieved change and withdrawal, apropos of nothing I saw, gasping and speaking newly. Its companions watche
d its unexpected transcendence or fall. Rooftop, though, couldn’t reach it. It dosed itself with the last of the datchips. It was the only addict left among us.

  I don’t know what the parameters of friendship were among the Ariekei, but I think that they must all have been sad. And Rooftop, as its name was, must have been lonely. It watched the scratch-and-gesture conversations around it, and I thought that being surrounded by the changed must be, for it, like a mild hell. You did save us, I thought at it. Without you we’d have died. As if that could comfort it.

  EVERY DAY Spanish told me of the progress. When I consider what it was that actually happened, what the Absurd and the New Hearing achieved, it took no time at all. I don’t know how many days of camping among these silent discussions it had been when I realised that there were cams watching us, eddying nervously in the wind. But I knew we were past ready.

  “Jesus,” I said, and pointed them out to Bren. “Christ Pharotekton.” I stood below the cams, gesturing at them like newly expressive Ariekei, beckoning them.

  They were scouts from a school around EzCal’s ship. It couldn’t be far: they’d come, following the directions and promises of Toweller and Baptist. Some vespcams seemed to want to shy away; others focused on us. It was too late for the god-drug to turn back now, block transmissions, pretend ignorance, even if they understood what they were seeing. The feeds from those little lenses were being watched not only in the oncoming ship, but by thousands of Embassytowners.

  “Listen,” I shouted, and was aware of many Ariekene eyes on me. The lenses scudded, anxious midges, came a little lower. “Listen to me,” I said and grit my teeth in the wind. “Listen to me.”

  “They must’ve been wondering what the delay was,” Bren said. “What was keeping the Absurd. How long have they been waiting? Hiding, waiting to die, wondering what’s the hold-up.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Get them here. Get EzCal here now.” I pointed at Spanish Dancer, at the fanwingless to which it spoke, and first Spanish, then one by one all the hundreds of Absurd, pointed at me. The cams buzzed, changing positions, and I kept my eyes on one fixed point, as if the little swarm were one entity into whose eye I stared. “Get them here now. EzCal . . . Can you see me, EzCal?” I jabbed my hand. “Cal, get here now and bring your fucking sidekick with you.

  “You get to live, so spread the word. Embassytown, can you hear me? You get to live. But you better get here and find out what you have to do, EzCal. Because there are some conditions.”

  29

  I’LL GIVE EZCAL THIS. When they didn’t speak, when they stood to look out over the ridge down kilometres of country and the camp-town of the Absurd, they looked epic. They didn’t deserve it.

  They’d come to affect baroque: perhaps it was a comfort to some Embassytowners. There were trims of glitter on Cal’s clothes, a crest on his aeoli mask. Even Ez wore purple.

  In silence their failings were transmuted, or camouflaged at least. Cal’s sneer passed for regal: Ez’s sulking a thoughtful reserve. They had a small entourage: people who had recently been my colleagues. Some greeted me and Bren when their flier landed. Simmon shook my hand. Southel had come, and MagDa. I couldn’t describe their expressions. Wyatt was with them, still guarded, it seemed, but consulted, great operator, prisoner-vizier. He didn’t meet my eye. Baptist and Toweller stepped down, back from Embassytown, greeted their companions. Greeted me. The Embassytowners watched them, in what must have been great shock. This journey hadn’t turned out as expected.

  The officers who’d come had weapons. I know that if the situation had been a little different, EzCal might have tried to have them kill us, as they’d tried to kill us when we travelled. Now, though, the remnants of the Staff in their pointless retinue and the officers and even JasMin, who were there, wouldn’t let them. By now everyone in Embassytown had seen the incoming army, and my transmission, and everyone knew that we had stopped them. All Cal had for a last few hours was the pretence that he ruled.

  Those Terre refugees had come closer day on day: they were mingling with us now, though mostly all they did was watch our interactions with the Absurd. Ez looked into the sky, and back across the distance toward Embassytown.

  Much later I’d hear stories of his actions during my travels: how he’d contrived to test Cal’s patience; the plans for what could only be considered a coup, which Cal had crushed more in contempt than anger. Ez eyed us. I could see him calculating. Jesus do you never stop? I thought. I didn’t give a shit about his story. To Embassytown and the Languageless, Ez and Cal’s squabbles were vastly less important than that they were EzCal.

  I stood with delegates from the Absurd army, twenty or thirty thrown up from the ranks. “So it’s you I’m talking to, is it, Avice Benner Cho?” Cal said coolly. “You speak for . . .” He indicated the fanwingless closest to me, our erstwhile captive.

  “Theuth,” I said. “It goes by Theuth.”

  “What do you mean ‘it goes by Theuth,’” he said. “It doesn’t go by anything. . . .”

  “We call it Theuth,” I said. “So that’s what it goes by. I’ll show you how to write that down. Or better, Theuth will.”

  BAD ENOUGH to be defeated, isn’t it? Even now you’d try to take us out, Cal: me, Bren, the rest of us. Because the way we saved Embassytown means the end of your reign, as it has, look, ended; and even though your whole damn prefecture was a function of despair and collapse, you’d rather lose it on your terms than be saved on ours. That was what I wanted to say.

  There were Absurd with Theuth and Spanish, those most adept at the generation of the ideogrammatic script they were inventing, the most intuitive at the reading and performing of gestures. It wasn’t a stable group. Even a few brave Ariekene addicts had arrived, too, come all the way from the city subsisting on pilfered datchips, to see the historic agreement, the change. Rooftop was there, playing its own sound files to itself in sadness. Human runaways squatted on overlooking ledges coloured with Ariekene mottled moulds, and watched the negotiations. They came and went as they wanted.

  Cal, perhaps Ez too, tried to depict what was happening as protracted discussion. Really it was just a slow process of explaining facts, and receiving orders, in a nascent script. What took days was making sure the Absurd understood, and understanding what they wanted us to do about it.

  You’ve no authority, I could have said to Cal. This is a surrender. You’d love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts. But you’re just here because I told the Absurd you were the one they’d have to tell what to do. And the humans watching, the refugees scowling under their cowls, are going to remember how it’s obvious that you don’t know what’s happening. You’re doing a lot of hanging around during this particular change of epoch, because you’re only a detail.

  CAMS WENT EVERYWHERE. There were a proliferation of independent home-rigged kits, or those hijacked or gone rogue and uploading their feeds to whatever frequencies they could. Embassytown was watching on the other side of all the lenses.

  At night the Ariekei surrounded my party. We asked them to: I still wasn’t certain EzCal wouldn’t attempt revenge.

  “What’s going to happen?” MagDa said. They looked at me with wariness and respect.

  “It’ll be different,” I said, “but we will be here. Now they

  know they can be cured it changes everything. How is it in the city? And in Embassytown?”

  Panic and expectancy. Among the Ariekei it was still mostly confusion. There was fighting between factions—they’d seemed united under EzCal’s proxy , and obeyed EzCal’s orders, but now they fought for reasons difficult to make sense of.

  “We’ll—they’ll—do everything they can to spread this,” I said. “No more fixes necessary. We’re trying to work together. Theuth mostly speaks for the Languageless now. Spanish is talking to us—to YlSib, obviously, but it can even . . .” MagDa hadn’t seen Spanish and me in the evenings: talking, haltingly. “But I have to tell you something,”
I said to her quietly. “I’ve heard how people are describing what this is, and it’s wrong. There is no cure. Spanish and the others . . . they might not be addicted anymore but they’re not cured: they’re changed. That’s what this is. I know it might sound the same, but do you understand that they can’t speak Language, anymore, MagDa? Anymore than you ever could.”

  IT WAS A MORNING, very cloudless. In the lower lands around me, among the filamented undergrowth of the planet, I knew there were agents of script, disseminating the new skill, the concept of it, among the Absurd. Already there were deviant forms from those first suggested, dissident renditions of ideograms, specialist vocabulary created by the semiogenesis of scuff-and-point.

  It wouldn’t be long before some Ariekene reader reproduced the ground-scratch writing in stain, on something they could hand over, rather than trying to remember and replicate it. Maybe we’d show them how. I imagined a pen held in a giftwing.

  The leading cadre of the Absurd stood still. The Embassy-town entourage were as smart as they could manage in these circumstances. Various of the human refugees were watching. Theuth and Spanish stood close to me, looking at the cams.

  Spanish attracted my attention with its giftwing. “” It spoke to me softly. I hesitated and it spoke again. “”

  EzCal faced me. They looked like kings again. Ez’s face was blank: Cal’s was swollen with anger.

  “Listen. Do you understand?” All the Embassytowners could hear me easily, but it was EzCal I was speaking to. “Do you understand how it’s going to be?

  “The Absurd are coming back to the city, and so are we. We’ll set things up together. They’ll have some ideas. I tell you, if I were Kora-Saygiss, your little quisling, I’d be careful. It was smart of you not to let it come. We’ll work out the details. We’ll be there, in Embassytown.”