Embassytown

30

THIS IS WHAT said.

It was in a plaza in the city, a big square made bigger by cajoling the buildings. I remember it very well. Bren stood by me and whispered a translation but I could make almost perfect sense of it all.

I remember the weather, the houses, the air and the crowd of Ariekei. Thousands, addicts jostling to the edges of the opening. Some must have expected EzCal, wanted their god-drug fix. This is what Spanish Dancer said.

Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much of certain things. We were grown into Language. After history we made city and machines and gave them names. We didn’t speak so much of certain things. Language spoke us. The words that wanted to be city and machines had us speak them so they could be.

When the humans came they had no names, and we made new words so they would have places in the world. They didn’t do as other things do. We spoke them into Language. Language took them in.

We were like hunters. We were like plants eating light. The humans made their town in our town like a star in a circle. They made their place like a filament in a flower. We spoke the name of their place, but we know it had another name, sitting in the city like an organ in a body, like a tongue in a mouth.

Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much because we were like this one, who years ago was the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her. We were like her. You decide why we were like her and why we were not like her. Why she’s like herself or is not. We’ve been like all things; we left the city during the drugtime and speak more now.

Before the humans came we didn’t speak. We’ve been like countless things, we’ve been like all things, we’ve been like the animals over Embassytown in the direction of which I raise my giftwing, which is a speaking you’ll come to understand. We didn’t speak, we were mute, we only dropped the stones we mentioned out of our mouths, opened our mouths and had the birds we described fly out, we were vectors, we were the birds eating in mindlessness, we were the girl in darkness, only knowing it when we weren’t anymore.

We speak now or I do, and others do. You’ve never spoken before. You will. You’ll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.

You have never spoken before.

That was what Spanish Dancer said to its gathered people. It said more. It was much less clumsy with them than I’d been when I changed it: it understood much better the psyches it wanted to alter, and its words were surgery.

At first those in the square listened, not knowing what for. As its words grew more outlandish and impossible, there were brayings of consternation. They were raucous, as they would be at any virtuoso lies, then something much more. There was a hysteria of admiration and concern.

As Spanish spoke, Ariekei shouted in more than astonishment. These were the sounds of crisis. I remembered them from when I’d taught Spanish Dancer to lie. I was hearing minds reconfigured. Deaths: old thoughts dying. I saw the upthrown giftwings and fanwings of ecstasy, ecstasy in an old sense, not without pain and terror, of visions, and then the silence of the adult Ariekei new-born.

There were only a few that first time. Most who listened were left terrified perhaps, tremulous, having glimpsed something. When at last they calmed, some eventually clamoured for EzCal again, their need making them forgetful.

But there were others who tipped over, became new things, learnt language, at what Spanish Dancer said. I understood almost every word it spoke.

Sometimes when Spanish Dancer is talking to me in my own language, it doesn’t say but , or . I think it knows that pleases me. A present for me.

31

POOR SCILE.

How do I tell this?

MOST MORNINGS I go to Lilypad Hill. The adjutants and I discuss plans. “Anything yet?” I say, and every morning so far they’ve checked the readings and shaken their heads, “Not yet,” and I’ve said, “Well, soon. Be ready.”

Can I say Poor Scile, after everything? I can. His actions disgust me—there are dead friends who’d be alive if it weren’t for him—but could you not feel pity to see him?

He’s in the jail we made from the infirmary. His neighbours are those failed Ambassadors still too broken to walk out of the doors when we opened them. Scile knows he’s alive because, criminal as he is, he didn’t do anything so very bad, so unforgivable as to warrant execution. We’ve decided we don’t have the death penalty just for murder.

I go to see him sometimes. People understand. It’s pity, concern, curiosity and the ghost of affection. He can’t believe what’s happened. He can’t believe he so failed.

It was pandemonium when he killed Cal. I’m surprised he wasn’t shot in turn, that we were able to take him alive.

“You will not do this,” he said. Cal still twitched on the ground. Scile swung his gun at Spanish Dancer. “They will not be like you.” We stopped him before he fired again. Spanish smacked his pistol away. Grabbed Scile’s shirt and said to him “?” Scile put his hands over his ears and called Spanish Dancer a devil.

It hadn’t been a suicide walk but a pilgrimage. He’d gone to find the Absurd army, to walk behind them a witness and apostle while they—what, cleaning fire, holy avengers who’d rather cut themselves than be tainted by lies?—purged the ruined Ariekei, got the world ready again, a nursery, for unborn pure-Languaged young.

It had been a brutal hope but it had been hope. I’m sure Scile heard when EzCal was born, no matter where he was. I don’t know how word could have reached him but word does. He must have known EzCal and their oratees couldn’t withstand the Absurd. But he didn’t reckon with me and Bren and Spanish Dancer. The horror he must have felt to see us and what we did, from the camps, beside the army. He was patient, waiting until the god-drug arrived before doing his holy work.

He sacrificed himself, he must have thought, for the Absurd. Perhaps he had in mind the child Ariekei that would one day walk through empty Embassytown, think of explanations for its ruins, and say them in Language. Scile was ready for us all to die.

He wasn’t quite wrong: there had been a fall. The Ariekei are different now. It’s true that now they speak lies.

Poor Scile, I’ll say it again. He must think he’s fallen among Lucifers.

RECENTLY A MIAB incame to Lilypad Hill. We were no longer the people to whom it had been sent. I think that’s why I felt what I can only call naughtiness, opening it. I felt what only I would recognise as the faintest immerdamp around it. Like bad children we pulled out treats. Wine; foods; medicine; luxuries: there were no surprises. We opened our orders, and Wyatt’s sealed instructions too. He didn’t try to stop us. They were no surprise either.

THE NEW ARIEKEI can speak to automa, and can understand them.

“I don’t want to go in,” I said.

“It’s fine, it’s just...” Bren nodded.

He and Spanish Dancer took longer than I expected. I waited in the street, watched hoardings move. The products they advertise aren’t sold anymore.

They rejoined me. “She’s there,” Bren said.

“And?”

“.”

“And... ?” I said. “Did she speak to you?” I said to Spanish. It and Bren looked at each other.

“.”

I looked up at her building. There must be cams at points; there are cams everywhere, and my friend had always been part of her surroundings. I didn’t wave.

“Ehrsul I know that you can understand the words I’m saying, Spanish said,” Bren said. “In Anglo. And she doesn’t even look back. She goes: ‘No, you can’t speak to me; Ariekei can’t understand me.’ ‘Avice would like to know how you are,’ it says. ‘What you’ve been doing.’ She says, ‘Avice! How is she? And you can’t speak to me. You don’t understand me, and you can’t speak anything but Language.’”

WE PASSED an avenue of outdated trids, a grassroots market, while I said nothing, and Bren did not insist. In the command economy of our reconstruction, our basics are provided, but extras, luxuries, throw up such barter. They make me think of markets in other cities, on other places.

The blockades have been taken down. Some city-dwellers say that as they can breathe our air but we can’t breathe theirs, the Embassytown atmosphere should be extended over the whole city. Where there are new additions being grown, Ariekene buildings are subtly unclassic. Here a spire; an angled window; a familiar kind of buttress: our Terre topography’s become fashionable.

CAN’T BE FOUND; and DalTon can’t be found: or no one who knows where they are, human or indigenous, will say. Of course their disappearances made me suspect club justice. But I’m in informing networks as good as any, and if something like that has happened, it’s been very quiet. Which is no way to encourager les autres. I think probably either that they were some of the many killed and effaced by the war, or that one is or both are hiding—it’s not as if you can’t still do that in the city—waiting for whatever. I suppose we’ll have to be vigilant.

DalTon’s one thing, as far as I’m concerned. As for , though, I don’t think revenge of lynch or any other kind is what most New Ariekei want, if they even say they lived under . No Ariekei I know have been able to answer my questions, about what it was like, about whether they remember how they thought, before. About Language. Spanish Dancer’s first speech, about that change, was as much infection as exposition. I don’t say they don’t remember; I say that they can’t tell me how it was if they do.

No one knows why some Ariekei are immune to metaphor. No attention from Spanish or its growing number of deputies, its proselytisers, altering their listeners with careful, infectious, ostentatiously lie-filled sermons, works on all of them. Each meeting there are successes: Ariekei staggering out of Language, into language and semes. Others come close, to go next time or the next. And there are those who refuse to; and those that, like Rooftop, sick with purity, just can’t. They still can’t speak to me, only to Ambassadors. They only understand a dying Language. Now we have the drugs, the voices, to keep them alive, and no more gods.

EZSEY, I HEARD one oratee tell YlSib, was its favourite, because the tremor occasioned by their voice was... and there, vocabulary, mine and its, failed us. Others prefer EzLott, or EzBel, according to the high they give.

Scile was usually a better thinker than his last murder would imply. He knew how we’d created EzCal: he should have thought we could just do it again. We unhooked the mechanisms from inside Cal’s head, and they were safe, but even had they not been, we never faced another end.

“I’ve got something,” MagDa had said. “Southel’s been putting together a few prototypes for weeks.” “Boosters.” “We’ve had volunteers. We’re ready to go.”

While we’d pursued ours, that had been their secret plan. A stockpile, against Cal and EzCal, whose power lay in their uniqueness. MagDa’s and my and Bren’s treacheries dovetailed. Scile had brought no narrative to a conclusion. He killed Cal and very little changed.

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. Afterwards, 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. Or 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 .