Embassytown - China Mieville [130]
Other vehicles slowed too. Other drivers and pilots peered out of their windows. Behind me, hidden in our machine, the Absurd hissed, unhearing its own self. The escapees were like YlSib: city exiles. Runaway Staff, I imagined, as well as those not fleeing such grandiose pasts. The glider landed and Shonas leaned out. I wondered where DalTon were. The city-dwellers were wary, but they mostly knew each other, greeted each other and swapped brief information about the Absurd, and the Embassytown and city forces.
When we drove on again, we did so together in a little entourage. The glider overhead signalled to us with its wings and wing-lights. “Tell Spanish to come here,” I said to YlSib. “Tell it what I say.” I pointed out of the chariot’s eyes. Spanish Dancer didn’t look in the direction of my gesture. “Look out and upward at the machine above us,” I, then YlSib, said. Sometimes when I spoke for the Ariekei, I unthinkingly mimicked the precision of Language as translated into Anglo-Ubiq. “The vessel overhead, the colours on its wings, the way they move—it’s telling us things. It’s talking to us.”
Spanish Dancer looked with some of its eyes at the plane, with some of them at YlSib, and with one at me. I stared at that eye. Yl-Sib’ve told you, but do you know it’s me speaking? I thought.
“It doesn’t understand,” Yl or Sib said. “It can tell I’m not lying, I think, but it can tell that the plane’s not talking to us either.”
“But it is,” I said.
When dawn came we veered, to avoid EzCal’s force, to bypass the camp.
“Come on, come on,” Bren said to himself. We were desperate to reach the Absurd before the combined troops did. “They’re in no hurry,” said Bren. “We’ll overtake them. They don’t want to fight anyway—they’re going to try to negotiate.”
“The problem is,” I said, “they can’t.”
I could still see the glider. The other craft were behind, close enough for us to wave at their drivers. By midmorning gas-trees filled the plateau ahead, a canopy of thousands of house-size flesh-bags bobbing in breezes, straining at the ground. One by one the other craft peeled away from behind us. “Hey,” I said.
“They can’t come through here,” Bren said. Only the three centaurs were with us now. YlSib looked nervously at each other.
“Bren,” said one. “They’re little, we’re not.” “We can’t go through here either.” “Not secretly.” “We’ll leave tracks …”
“Have you not been listening?” he said. He yanked at the controls and if anything accelerated. “We don’t have any time. We have to get there fast. So please get to work. You should be teaching. Because it isn’t enough for us to get there: we have a job to do when we do.”
But it was impossible to concentrate as we approached the forest. Some of the trees moved weakly out of our way, hauled by roots, but most were too slow. I braced. The carriage’s jutting legs scythed through rope trunks. In our passing trees soared straight up, dangling their broken tethers. We left a line of them accelerating skyward as we cut into the woodland. Through the rear windows I saw the centaurs carrying their riders over the coiled stumps we left behind. There wasn’t much debris: it had flown away.
“Beyond this forest and then a few kilometres,” Bren said, voice shaking with our motion. “That’s where the armies are.”
Bloated treetops buffeted each other above. There were darks and shadows of layered variety around us, in which, I abruptly thought, there might be anything: Ariekene ruins, such impossible things. In our wake was a wedge of sky into which the dislodged trees rose in strict formation until they reached wind and scattered. It was because of that gap in the forest that I saw the plane twisting in dogfight turns.
“Something’s happening,” I said. We craned to see it curve up and the weapons below its nose flare, against another, attacking flyer.
“Fucking Pharotekton damn,” Bren said.
We couldn’t hide. Wherever we veered we’d announce our route in soaring trees, so we did nothing but try to increase our speed, the centaur-riders jabbing rifles behind us. Detonations sounded and from the tops