Embassytown - China Mieville [125]
“How many are there?” I said. “Outcasts. In the city.”
Yl and Sib said nothing. My plans to save Embassytown were briefly part of what happened to DalTon and Shonas, and the drama of the revenge of the ex-Ambassador and their one-time vizier had happened to me. I was grateful to Shonas for my life.
“It’s on its way,” YlSib told me. “What do you call it? Spanish Dancer.”
“I know, it’s rude of me,” I said. “I’ll stop using that name.”
“Why?” “It doesn’t care and neither do we.”
The room was small. Windowless of course, illuminated by fronds that glowed.
“There’s power,” I said.
“No.” “The light’s emitted by a necrophage in the walls.”
“Come on,” I said. The building was dying and we were lit by that. I could only laugh.
I asked again, but YlSib wouldn’t tell me what had sent them hundreds of thousands of hours ago out of Embassytown, to live behind aeoli masks in that exile microculture. We waited. “More city-Hosts are leaving,” YlSib said. “And plenty of them are going to join the Absurd.” “There won’t be many left to guard, even if they’re prepared to.”
“They won’t have any choice. EzCal’ll order them to.”
“What’s your plan?” “What is it you want to do?”
“You know what,” I said. “Bren told you.” The truth was I didn’t know how to explain it. When Spanish Dancer arrived, I said, “Look. I’ll show you.”
I remembered the way the captive Languageless had moved. The Absurd were closing in and there was no point waiting for Bren. With YlSib’s help, their careful translation, very slowly at first, we started. I, against every inclination I’d had for many years, had no choice but to take control.
I don’t think urgency is a bacillus that can cross exotypes, but it was as if the Ariekei understood that something in me had changed. They and I fervently engaged. I remembered them in The Cravat, fascinated in me and all the other similes.
“You want to lie,” I said to Spanish Dancer. I spoke quickly. “Show me what you can do. How close are you? Let’s start again.” I spent hours listening to it and its group perform their little untruths, through YlSib’s translations. I made notes and strained to remember how had done what it had done. That seemed to me the key.
I’d talked about it with Bren. Often had wordplayed, eroding qualifying clauses until what was left was a sudden surprising lie. But that method, however well done, was a sideshow. ’s theoretical focus had been on me.
It had seen us—us similes made of Terre, not merely us similes—as key to some more fundamental and enabling not-truth. Its signature mendacity, spoken with dandy élan though only a word-trick, hinted at that shift born of contact. Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much. Before the humans came we didn’t speak.
Through a dissembling made of omitted clauses it laid out its manifesto. Before the humans came we didn’t speak: so we will, can, must speak through them. It made that falsity a true aspiration. , insisting on a certain might-be, changed what was. It had learnt to lie to insist on a truth.
“So,” I said to Spanish Dancer, and the companions that had joined it. “Let’s follow Surl Tesh-echer.” YlSib translated. The Ariekei reacted. “It pointed where to go. You know me. I’m the girl hurt in darkness who ate what was given to her. Tell me what I’m like, and we’ll get to what I am.”
I gave them their nicknames. Spanish Dancer, Toweller, Baptist, Duck. I’d say their names and point and even smile—you never know, you don’t know what they have or haven’t clocked. Their battery-beasts skipped about as we worked. All these Ariekei could lie, a bit. They were followers of the greatest liar in their history. I helped them leave things out,