Embassytown

My handset still contained Hasser’s number, and Valdik’s, and several other similes’. It had been a long time. I considered calling one. What does it matter now? I thought, but I didn’t do it.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doing so, but I’d begun to prepare, for whatever it was. I was copying what data I thought precious, hiding treasured objects, packing essentials into a shoulder bag. I’d always been fascinated at how my body ran things sometimes. While I felt like I was agonising, my limbs did what was needed.

Night would come without my noticing, and the aeoli-breath was still cool. Then at this crucial change- moment I remember there were night-bird noises and the gibbering of local animals. It wasn’t yet so late there was no traffic. I wasn’t tired at all. It was hard to make sense of the shots from Embassytown that I was watching. The newsware was still processing. A human commentator said, “We’re not sure what... we... we’re seeing something from the city... ah... movement from...”

The figures in cam-view were Ariekei. The Ariekei were moving. On my screen and through my window, I saw corvids frantic in several directions in the air. I heard things. I was already leaning out of my house and I saw their source. The Hosts were coming out of their city into Embassytown.

I RAN TO the interzone between Embassytown and the city. Lights came on as people woke to the noise, but though I was joined by more and more blinking citizens I didn’t feel part of anything. I passed under light globes whispering where moths touched them. Below arches I’d known all my life, and, tasting the thinning air, I knew I was only a street or two from the edge of the city. I was in Beckon Street, which swept downhill out of our enclave.

It was an old part of Embassytown. There were plaster griffins at the edges of the eaves. Not far away, our architecture was overcome, the ivy that tugged it smothered by fronds of fleshmatter and Ariekene business. The biorigging probed plastone and brick in a rill of skin.

The Hosts filled the road, jostling each other with odd motion. A single Host had grace but en masse they were a herd, in slow stampede. I’d never seen so many. I could hear the slide of their armour, the tap-tapping of thousands of their feet. Zelles scuttled.

As they came into the human reach the streetlamps and the colours of our displays made them a psychedelia. Rumpled women and men in nightclothes lined the walkways, so the Ariekei entered Embassytown with us either side as if to greet them, as if this were a parade. Cameras darted overhead, little busybodies.

There were Hosts in all their sentient stages, from the newly conscious to those about to slip into mindlessness. Hundreds of fanwings fluttered, and I wanted to be above looking down at that, a camouflage of shuddering colours. They passed me, I followed them.

Many Terre watching could understand Language, but of course none of us could speak it. Some couldn’t restrain asking in Anglo-Ubiq: “What are you doing?” “Where are you going?” We trailed the Ariekei north, climbing the incline toward the Embassy, on the roadways and verges, crabgrass and our debris. Constables had arrived. They waved their arms as if moving us on, as if they were protecting our aging walls. They said things that had no meaning at all: “Come on now!” or “Move away there!”

Human children had come to stare. I saw them play Ambassador, dueting nonsense noises and nodding wisely as if the Ariekei were responding. The Hosts took us a coiled route, amassing onlookers, cats and altfoxes bolting before the aliens. We came past the ruins.

Several Ambassadors—RanDolph, MagDa, EdGar, I saw—emerged from the dark, constables and Staff around them. They shouted greetings, but the Hosts didn’t pause or acknowledge them.

The Ambassadors said, “!” Stop. Wait. Stop.

Friends, they shouted, tell us what we can do, why are you here? They retreated at the head of the Ariekene crowd, ignored. Someone had turned on the light of a church, as if it were Utuday, and its beam rotated overhead. The Hosts began to speak, to shout, each in their two voices. A cacophony at first, a mix of speech and sounds I think weren’t speech, and out of that came a chant. Several words I didn’t know, and one I did.

“... ... ...”

THE ARIEKEI spread out before the black stone steps of the Embassy. I walked among them. The Hosts let me in, moving to accommodate me, glancing with eye-corals. Their spiky fibrous limbs were a thicket, their unbending flanks like polished plastic. My littleness was hidden, and unobserved I watched the Ambassadors panicking. “,” the Hosts kept saying. The people of Embassytown were saying it as best they could, too—“EzRa...” An undeliberate chant of the same word in two languages, the name.

JoaQuin and MayBel debated in furious whispers. Behind JasMin and ArnOld and MagDa I saw CalVin. They looked stricken. Staff were bickering too, and the constables around them looked close to panic, their carbines and geistguns dangerously at ready.

A Host stepped forward. “,” it said: I am .

One of those that had greeted EzRa, at the Arrival Ball.

Hello, said. We are here for . Bring . And on. JoaQuin tried to speak, and MayBel, and the Host paid no attention. Others joined in with it, its demand. They came slowly forward, and it was impossible not to have a sense of their bigness, the sway of their shell-hard limbs.

“... we have no choice!” I heard Joa or Quin, and I thought it was to MayBel but saw with shock that it was to Quin or Joa. The Ambassadors unhuddled, and stepping out from among them, coming forth as if in a conjuring trick, was EzRa.

EZ LOOKED anxious; Ra was cardsharp blank. As their colleagues parted for them Ez gave them a look of hatred. At the top of the stairs EzRa looked down at the congregation.

The Ariekei spread the tines of their antlers of eyes wide to take in the two men.

“.”

spoke again. The Language-fluent among us meant what it said was quickly communicated.

EzRa, it said. Talk.

EzRa will speak to us or we will make it speak.

“You can’t do this,” someone from Staff or Ambassadorial ranks shouted, and someone else answered, “What can we do?” EzRa looked at each other and murmured a preparation. Ez sighed; Ra’s face remained set.

Friends, they said. Ez said “curish” and Ra “loah”— friends. There was a snap of Ariekei thoraxes and limbs.

Friends, we thank you for this visit, EzRa said, and the Ariekei reeled, buffeting me. Friends, we thank you for this greeting, EzRa said, and the ecstasy went on.

Ra continued to mutter occasionally but Ez had gone silent, so Language decomposed. The Hosts hubbubbed. Some flailed their giftwings and wrapped themselves within them, some entwined them with others’.

shouted speak and spoke again. They said pleasantries, emptinesses, polite variants of Hello, hello.

The Ariekei concentrated, as if asleep or digesting. Around the plaza I saw hundreds of Embassytowners, and soundless hovering cams.

“You stupid, stupid bastards,” someone said on the Embassy steps. The words were as ignored as the ivy. Everyone was looking at the Hosts. They were coming back from whatever it was that had happened to them.

Good, said one. It wasn’t . Good. It turned. did so too. The Ariekei all turned back the way they had come.