Embassytown - China Mieville [143]
It wouldn’t be long before some Ariekene reader reproduced the ground-scratch writing in stain, on something they could hand over, rather than trying to remember and replicate it. Maybe we’d show them how. I imagined a pen held in a giftwing.
The leading cadre of the Absurd stood still. The Embassytown entourage were as smart as they could manage in these circumstances. Various of the human refugees were watching. Theuth and Spanish stood close to me, looking at the cams.
Spanish attracted my attention with its giftwing. “.” It spoke to me softly. I hesitated and it spoke again. “.”
EzCal faced me. They looked like kings again. Ez’s face was blank: Cal’s was swollen with anger.
“Listen. Do you understand?” All the Embassytowners could hear me easily, but it was EzCal I was speaking to. “Do you understand how it’s going to be?
“The Absurd are coming back to the city, and so are we. We’ll set things up together. They’ll have some ideas. I tell you, if I were Kora-Saygiss, your little quisling, I’d be careful. It was smart of you not to let it come. We’ll work out the details. We’ll be there, in Embassytown.”
Until the relief. Everything’s different, forever, I thought. I glanced at my notes. “They were going to kill us because we were the source of god-drugs. They knew it was too late for them, they were lost, but they were going to make a totally new start for those after them if they got rid of the problem. Us. You understand how selfless they were? It wouldn’t help them. It was for their kids. This generation would either be deafened, dead or dying in withdrawal.
“But now they know the addicted can be cured.” I ignored MagDa’s stares and pointed at Spanish: it pointed back at me. “And if they can be cured then we’re an irrelevance. That is why we get to live. See? But they have to be cured. That’s the condition. Otherwise we’re still a sickness. And it takes time to cure oratees.” I gestured at Rooftop, still untouched by metaphor. Everyone looked at it. It looked back. “And there’s plenty of them. So your job is to keep them going in the meantime, EzCal, till they don’t need you anymore. Without you to tide them, the addicted’ll start to die. Too quick to be cured, or even deafened. So you have to keep them alive.”
“,” Spanish said. There were gasps from all the humans, who’d never heard it speak its doubled Anglo-Ubiq. Spanish was explaining again why the Absurd would have killed us all and mutilated their compatriots, and why they would now let us live. The Ariekei loved the Ariekei. That verb of ours was the only one that came close. It wasn’t flawless, but that’s in the way of translation. It was as much a truth as a lie. The New Hearing and the Absurd loved the addicted, and would cure them one of the two ways out, induct them into one group or the other.
“None of you have been ambassadors for a long time,” I said. “Who’ve you been speaking for but yourselves? And now you’re not a god or a fix or a functionary, EzCal—you’re a factory. The Ariekei have a need: you fulfill it. And believe me, the content’ll be policed.” Ez’s face didn’t move. Cal’s twisted. No chance to issue orders that could, literally, not be disobeyed. “The city’ll be full of Absurd. So if you try to stir things, put instructions in what you say, even restart the war, they’ll stop you. If we’re too much trouble to bother with, we’re gone. They don’t want to take the fanwings of all the addicted, deafen every single adult Ariekei in their cycle, now there’s another way: but they will if they think they have to. Do you see?”
There’s nothing else for you to do, I thought. You have no choice. Those officers, the ones you brought with you, will hold weapons to your heads and demand you speak Language if necessary. And I’ll be with them. Spanish and the Absurd would spread the two cures. Recourse to the knife wasn’t the existential catastrophe it had been for all those here, who’d thought it ended thought. It would never be relished, but for those