Embassytown

equalised. I was looking at an Ambassador, an Ambassador I did not recognise. And that, I knew, wasn’t possible.

“Yes,” Bren said to me. He laughed minutely at my face. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “I need you to keep quiet about something. Well, about...”

One of the women came towards me. She held out her hand.

“Avice Benner Cho,” she said.

“Obviously this is a shock,” her doppel said.

“Oh no,” I said finally. “A shock? Please.”

“Avice.” Bren said. “Avice, this is Yl.” I learnt the spelling later. It sounded like ill. “And this is Sib.”

Their faces exactly those of each other, heavy and shrewd, but they wore different clothes. Yl was in red, Sib in grey. I shook my head. They both wore little aeoli, unhooked and resting in our Embassytown air.

“I saw you,” I remembered. “Once, in...” I pointed at the city.

“Probably,” said Sib.

“I don’t remember,” said Yl.

“Avice,” Bren said. “YlSib are here to... They’re how I know what’s going on.”

YlSib—what an ugly name. I knew as he said it that they’d once been Ambassador SibYl, and that this recomposition was part of their rebellion. “YlSib live in the city,” Bren said gently. Of course they did. He’d hinted to me of such hidden. I realised he was saying my name.

“Avice. Avice.”

“Why me, Bren?” I said. I said it quietly enough that it was as if intimate, though Yl and Sib could hear me. “Why am I here? Where’s MagDa, where are the others?”

“No,” he said. He and Sib and Yl glanced at each other. “Too much bad blood. History. YlSib and that lot were on opposite sides for a long time. Some things don’t change. But you’re different. And I need your help.”

I was staring into something opened up. Fractures, renegades, guerrilla Ambassadors, unquiet cleaved. What the hell else was out there? Who? Scile? Shiftfather Christmas? Back came stupid tales, now not so stupid. I remembered unanswered questions, I wondered who’d gone from Embassytown, who’d turned their backs on it, over years, and I wondered why.

“Embassytown’s dying,” Yl said. She gestured at the window, and Sib at the soundless wallscreen. The worst, most Language-starved Ariekei were coming. They shambled in unnatural bursts like toys. Troops of the collapsing, falling apart variously, claiming our streets without intent, with only oratees’ despair, but killing as they came, us and each other. We could no longer walk the outermost of our streets: there were too many attacks, too much Ariekene rage.

Cams showed those in their dotage instar wandering with pendulous food-bellies, some stumbling by their random ways into Embassytown. No Ariekei tended them. It was shocking. There were rumours that in periods between EzRa-word highs some Ariekei were eating these unstruggling elders, as evolution intended but their culture had abjured.

Even as things fell apart I was desperate to ask YlSib where they’d been, what had happened, what they’d done since they absconded, years ago. They’d lived so close, maybe in some biorigged dwelling that sweated air at them inside. Did they consult? Had they worked for the Ariekei? Were they independent? Trading in information, go-betweens in informal economies of which I’d never known a thing? There was no way, I thought, such a hinterland could have been sustained without the patronage of some in Embassytown.

“You said they weren’t helping us,” I said. “Those mad Ariekei that came and attacked the others.”

Bren said, “They weren’t.”

YlSib said, “Factions are emerging.” “Some Ariekei can’t even think anymore.” “They’re dying.” “Those are the ones tearing up the outskirts.” “Then there are some trying to keep some kind of order. Live in new ways.” “Manage their addiction.” “They’re trying all kinds of methods. Desperate stuff.” “Repeating phrases they’ve heard EzRa say, to see if they can give each other fixes.” “Trying to take control of neighbourhoods.” “Trying to ration out the broadcasts.” “Organise different listening shifts for different groups, to keep things more...” “... organised.” “And then there are dissidents who want to change everything.”

“We have sects,” Bren said. “So do they, now. Not ones that worship a god, though. Ones that hate it.”

“They know the world’s ending,” said YlSib. “And some of them want to bring in a new one.” “They despise the other Ariekei.” “That’s what you saw.” “Their word for the addicts was...” They said a word together, in Language. “They used to call them that,” Sib or Yl said, “although they can’t anymore.” “It means ‘weak’.” “ ‘Sick’.” “It means ‘languid’.” “Lotus-eaters.” “They’re going to start a new order.”

“How... ?” I remembered the stubbed and ruined fanwings. They can’t call them that anymore, because they can’t hear, or speak, they’ve no Language. “Oh, I...” I said. “Oh, God. They did it to themselves.”

“To escape temptation,” Bren said. “It’s a vicious cure but it’s a cure. Without hearing, their bodies stop needing the drug. And now, the only thing they hate worse than their afflicted brethren is the affliction.”

“Or, to put it another way, us,” said YlSib.

“If they’d seen you...” “... they’d have killed you faster than they did their own.”

“There’s not many of them,” Bren said. “Yet. But without EzRa to speak, without the drug, they’re the only Ariekei with a plan.”

“The only Ariekei,” Sib said. “We’ve got one too, though.” “We have,” said Yl, “a plan.”

15

IN THE OUT, I’d learnt that our Embassy isn’t a huge building. In countries on many planets I’d seen much larger: taller, aided by gravity-cranes; more sprawling. But it was large enough. I was only slightly surprised to discover that there were whole corridors, whole floors that by convoluted design I’d not only never been into but had never suspected were there.

“You know what to do,” YlSib had said to us. “You need a replacement.” “Open the damn infirmary.”

That was the basis of their idea, the plan that Bren relayed to MagDa’s committee, as if it were his own. I wasn’t clear on why he’d introduced me to YlSib, but he was right to trust me. Close to the top of the Embassy, in a set of infolding rooms and halls, was the separated-off zone. I followed those who knew the way.

The Ambassadors and Staff of the committee looked horrified at Bren’s suggestion. He insisted, with references incomprehensible to those of the committee ignorant of the infirmary he mentioned. I pretended to be one of them.

“There could be others in there we can use,” Bren said.

“And how are we supposed to know?” said Da.

“Well, that’s a difficulty,” he’d said. “We’re going to have to have a test subject.”

ONLY STREETS AWAY, the anarchy of desperate Ariekei grew worse, and more of our houses fell. Embassytowners still foolishly near the city would turn corners into those ravenous things, who rushed at them and in Language begged them to speak, to sound like EzRa sounded. When they didn’t, the Ariekei took hold of them and opened them up. Perhaps in rage, perhaps in some hope that the wanted sound would emerge from the holes they made.

I couldn’t believe what we were planning. We’d gone by foot into the city, in a snatch squad. Smoke and birds circled above us. Micropolitics were everything in Embassytown by then, groups of men and women enforcing their wills in territories of two or three streets, armed with wrenches, or pistols or pistol-beasts crudely rigged, that they shouldn’t have had to use, that clenched them too tight, drew blood from the weapon hand.

“Where’s EzRa then, you fuckers?” they shouted when they saw us. “Going to fix everything, are you?” Some of those posses shouted that they would attack the Hosts. If they did they might take down one or two of the weakest, but against those aggressive self-mutilated they’d have no chance.

Into the ring of Embassytown we had lost, where the Ariekei had been followed by pet weeds. They were