Embassytown

“in welcoming Ambassador EzRa.”

They were immediately surrounded. In that moment I saw no close friends, had no one with whom to share my tension or conspiratorial look. I waited for EzRa to do the rounds. When they did, how they did so was another indicator of their strangeness. They must have known how it would seem to us. As JoaQuin and Wyatt introduced them to people, Ez and Ra separated, moved somewhat apart. They glanced at each other from time to time, like a couple, but there were soon metres between them: nothing like doppels, nothing like an Ambassador. Their links must work differently, I thought. I glanced at their little mechanisms. They each wore a distinct design. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Disguising their unease with functionaries’ aplomb, JoaQuin led Ez and Wyatt Ra.

Each half of the new Ambassador was at the centre of a curious crowd. This was the first chance most of us had had to meet them. But there were Staff and Ambassadors whose fascination for the newcomers had clearly outlasted their own initial meetings. LeNa, RanDolph and HenRy were laughing with Ez, the shorter man, while Ra looked bashful as AnDrew asked him questions, and MagDa, I realised, stayed close enough to touch his hands.

The party bustled about me. I caught sight of Ehrsul’s rendered eyes at last and winked as Ra approached me. Wyatt made an aaah noise, held out his hands, kissed my cheeks.

“Avice! Ra, this is Avice Benner Cho, one of Embassytown’s... Well, Avice is any number of things.” He bowed as if granting me something. “She’s one of our immersers. She’s spent a good deal of time in the out, and now she offers cosmopolitan expertise and an invaluable traveller’s eye.” I liked Wyatt, and his little power plays. You might say we tended to twinkle at each other.

“Ra,” I said. A hesitation too short for him to notice, I think, and I held out my hand. I shouldn’t call him “Mr.” or “Squire”: legally he was not a man, but half of something. Had he been with Ez I’d have addressed them as “Ambassador.” I nodded at AnDrew, at Mag, at Da, who watched.

“Helmser Cho,” Ra said quietly. He after his own hesitation took my hand.

I laughed. “You’ve promoted me. And it’s Avice. Avice is fine.”

“Avice.”

We stood silent for a moment. He was tall and slim, pale, his hair dark and plaited. He seemed slightly anxious but he pulled himself together somewhat as we spoke.

“I admire you being able to immerse,” he said. “I never get used to it. Not that I’ve travelled a lot, but that’s partly why.”

I forget what I replied, but whatever it was, there was a silence after it. After a minute I said to him, “You’ll have to get better at it, you know. Small talk. That’s what your job is, from here on in.”

He smiled. “I’m not sure that’s quite fair,” he said.

“No,” I said. “There’s wine to drink and papers to sign, too.” He seemed delighted by that. “And for that you came all the way to Arieka,” I said. “For ever and ever.”

“Not for ever,” he said. “We’ll be here seventy, eighty kilohours. Until the next relief but one, I think. Then back to Bremen.”

I was astounded. My blather stopped. Of course I should not have been taken aback. An Ambassador leaving Embassytown. Nothing about this situation made sense. An Ambassador with somewhere else to return to was a contradiction in my terms.

Wyatt was muttering to Ra. MagDa smiled at me from behind them. I liked MagDa: they were one of the Ambassadors who hadn’t treated me differently since my falling out with CalVin.

“I’m from Bremen,” Ra told me. “I’d like to travel like you have.”

“Are you Cut or Turn?” I asked.

It was obvious he didn’t like the question. “Turn,” he said. He was older than me but not by very much.

“How did all this happen?” I said. “You and Ez? It takes years... How long have you been training?”

“Avice, really,” Wyatt said from behind Ra. “You’ll hear all about that—” He raised his eyebrows in a rebuke, but I raised mine back. There was a moment between him and Ra, before Ra spoke.

“We’d been friends a long time,” he said. “We got tested years ago. Kilohours, I mean. It was a random thing, part of an exhibition about the Stadt method.” He stopped as the noise in the room grew louder. Mag or Da said something, laughing, moved between me and Ra demanding the attention he politely turned on them.

“He’s tense,” I said to Wyatt quietly.

“I don’t think this is his favourite thing,” he said. “But then, would it be yours? Poor man’s in a zoo.”

“ ‘Poor man,’ ” I said. “Very, very strange to hear you speak of him like that.”

“Strange times.” We laughed over a swell of music. There was a strong smell of perfume and wine. We watched EzRa, who were not EzRa, not really, who were Ez and Ra, separated by metres. Ez was bantering with facility and pleasure. He caught my eye, excused himself to his interlocutors and approached.

“Hi,” he said. “I see you met my colleague.” He held out his hand.

“Your colleague? Yes, I met him.” I shook my head. JoaQuin were at Ez’s elbows, one on each side like elderly parents, and I nodded at them. “Your colleague. You really are just determined to scandalise us, Ez,” I said.

“Oh, please. No. Not at all, not at all.” He grinned an apology at the doppels escorting him. “It’s... well, I suppose it’s just a slightly different way of doing things.”

“And it’ll be invaluable,” said Joa, or Quin, heartily. The two spoke in turn. “You’re always telling us we’re too...” “... stuck in our ways, Avice. This will be...” “... good for us, and good for Embassytown.” One of them slapped Ez on the back. “Ambassador EzRa’s an outstanding linguist and bureaucrat.”

“You’re going to say they’re a ‘new broom,’ aren’t you, Ambassador?” I said.

JoaQuin laughed. “Why not?” “Why not indeed?” “That’s exactly what they are.”

WE WERE RUDE, Ehrsul and I. We’d stick together, whispering and showing off, at all these sorts of events. So when she waved a trid hand to attract my attention I joined her expecting to play. But when I reached her she said to me urgently, “Scile’s here.”

I didn’t look round. “Are you sure?”

“I never thought he’d come,” she said.

I said, “I don’t know what...” It was some time since I’d seen my husband. I didn’t want a scene. I bit a knuckle for a moment, stood up straighter. “He’s with CalVin, isn’t he?”

“Am I going to have to separate you two girls?” It was Ez again. He made me start. He’d extricated himself from JoaQuin’s anxious stewarding. He offered me a drink. He flexed something inside himself, and his augmens glimmered, changing the colour of his vague halo. I realised that with the help of his innard tech he might have been listening to us. I focused on him and tried not to look for Scile. Ez was shorter than me, and muscular. His hair was cut close.

“Ez, this is Ehrsul,” I said. To my astonishment he looked at her, said nothing and looked back at me. The rudeness made me gasp.

“Having a good time?” he said to me. I watched tiny lights move across his corneas. Ehrsul was moving away. I was going to go with her and blank him haughtily, but behind his back she flashed a quick display: Stay, learn.

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that,” I said to him quietly.

“What?” He was startled. “What? Your—”

“She’s not mine,” I said. He stared at me.

“The autom? I apologise. I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t me you owe that to.” He inclined his head.

“What are you monitoring?” I said to him after a silence. “I can see your displays.”

“It’s just habit. Temperature, air impurities, ambient noise. Mostly pointless. A few other things: I worked for years in situations that... well, I got used to checking for trid, cameras, ears, that sort of thing.” I raised an eyebrow. “And I tend to run translationware as a default.”

“No!” I said. “How exciting. Now, tell me the truth. Got ’ware in your ears? Are you running a soundtrack?”

He laughed. “No,” he said. “I grew out of that. I haven’t done that for... a good week or two.”

“Why are you running translation programs? You...” I put my arm on his and looked suddenly exaggeratedly stricken. “You do speak Language, don’t you? Oh dear, there’s been a terrible