Embassytown - China Mieville [133]
Like sped-up film of plants in the sun, Spanish’s coral at last budded. It started to speak and said two trickles of gibberish. It stopped and waited and started again. Yl and Sib and Bren translated but I didn’t need them. Spanish Dancer spoke slowly, as if it was listening hard to everything it said.
You are the girl who ate. I’m . I’m like you and I am you. Someone human gasped. Spanish craned its eye-coral and stared at its own fanwing. Two eyes came back to look at me. I have markings. I’m a Spanish dancer. I didn’t take my eyes off it. I’m like you, waiting for change. The Spanish dancer is the girl who was hurt in darkness.
“Yes,” I whispered, and YlSib said “,” Yes.
Other Ariekei were speaking. We are the girl who was hurt.
We were like the girl …
We are the girl …
“Tell them their names,” I said. “You move like a Terre bird: you’re Duck. You drip liquid from your Cut-mouth, so you’re Baptist. Explain that, YlSib, can you? Tell them, tell them the city’s a heart …”
I’m like the liquid-dripping man, I am him …
With the boisterous astonishment of revelation they pressed the similes by which I’d named them on until they were lies, telling a truth they’d never been able to before. They spoke metaphors.
“God,” Yl said.
“Jesus Christ Pharotekton,” said Bren.
“God,” said Sib.
The Ariekei spoke to each other. You’re the Spanish dancer. I could have wept.
“Jesus Christ, Avice, you did it.” Bren hugged me for a long time. YlSib hugged me. I held on to them all. “You did it.” We listened to the Ariekene new speakers call each other things in unprecedented formulations.
There were two poor bewildered remnants that could not, no matter what I said, that stared at their companions uncomprehending. But the others spoke in new ways. I’m not as I’ve ever been, Spanish Dancer told us.
Much later, when we’d been hours in our camp, I took a datchip, slowly, mindful of how long it had been since a fix, and played it. It was EzCal saying something about the shape of their clothes. Those two still unchanged, Dub and Rooftop I’d called them, which hadn’t shifted with the others, responded with the usual addict fervour to the sounds.
None of the others did. I looked at the Ariekei and they at us. They took slow steps, at last, in all directions. I don’t feel … one said. I am, I am not …
“Play another,” Bren said. EzCal spoke thinly to us about some other nonsense. The Ariekei looked at each other. I am not … another said.
I picked up another and made EzCal mutter the importance of maintaining medical supplies, and still only those two reacted. The others listened with nothing more than curiosity. I tried more, and while Dub and Rooftop stiffened the altered Ariekei made querying noises at EzCal’s ridiculous expositions.
“What happened?” YlSib stuttered. “Something’s happened to them.”
Yes. Something in the new language. New thinking. They were signifying now—there, elision, slippage between word and referent, with which they could play. They had room to think new conceptions.
I threw the chips to them, laughing, and they began to go through them. Our clearing was filled with overlapping voices of Ez and Cal.
“We changed Language,” I said. A sudden change—it couldn’t undo. “There’s nothing to … intoxicate them.” There only ever had been because it was impossible, a single split thinkingness of the world: embedded contradiction. If language, thought and word were separated, as they just had been, there was no succulence, no titillating impossible. No mystery. Where Language had been there was only language: signifying sound, to do things with and to.
The Ariekei sifted the datchips, listening with disbelief at how they heard what they heard. That’s what I think. Spanish Dancer remained bent, but its eyes looked up at me. Perhaps it knew now, in ways it could not have done before, that what it heard from me were words. It listened.
“Yes,” I said, “yes,” and Spanish Dancer cooed and, harmonising with itself, said: “.”
27
One by one as the night went